Enron and Bush
Does anyone remember that Dick Cheney energy panel (about some 8-10 months ago) that was very secretive and congress was going to go to court to get the names to? hmmmm.....
msnbc.com
Enron and Bush
Energy company’s demise will bedevil president even if he has nothing to hide
By Howard Fineman
SPECIAL TO MSNBC.COM
WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 — Ari Fleischer tried to drop the story casually, at the end of the “gaggle,” the informal morning briefing at the White House. As he was leaving the press room, he mentioned that Kenneth Lay, head of the Enron Corp., had asked the secretaries of treasury and commerce to help save the beleaguered company last October.
FLEISCHER MIGHT as well have shouted from the North Portico: This was, at least in Washington, sensational news. The president’s good friend and generous donor had been lobbying the administration to help stave off what turned out to be the biggest corporate failure in history. As the administration tells it, the Cabinet officers did nothing. But here comes the ominous question at the heart of all Washington inquisitions: What did the president — and vice president — know, and when did they know it?
The AP man knew the story was a big one, and moved it onto the wire in a hurry. By the time Fleischer held his regular briefing, at 12:15 p.m., the air in the White House press room was thick with the anticipation of the hunt. Virtually every question was about Enron. Only the guys from India and Greece seemed to care about anything else.
WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DAY MAKES
I’m always amazed at how fast the political weather changes here, in the press room and throughout the Beltway. The other day George W. Bush was a pol at the pinnacle, basking in the sunshine of a virtuous mission, stratospheric ratings and bickering foes. He paraded around Boston with Ted Kennedy, of all people, singing his praises.
Then the Enron story broke — big time, as Dick Cheney would say — and now the thunderheads are massing. That growing scandal, together with emerging questions about the war — Did we let Osama and Omar get away? What will we do with all those Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners? — suddenly make the president and his administration look, well, human.
Does the country care about Enron? We are about to find out. At least so far, no evidence has surfaced of any wrongdoing in the administration. It seems that it let Enron go down, despite the company’s vast connections. There’s no evidence of a cover-up, though it strains credulity that the White House only learned of Lay’s October calls this week. And Bush is popular, justifiably so, for his handling of the war on terror to date.
MEDIA WAITS TO POUNCE
The president has called for a full, let-the-chips-fall investigation of the Enron collapse, and top advisers with Enron ties — including Attorney General John Ashcroft — have recused themselves from involvement in it.
But this story has legs, as they say, and here’s why. For one, the scandal-selling machinery in Washington hums all the time, waiting for a new story line. The media have been supernice to Bush since Sept. 11, again with considerable justification. But the media knows only two ways of dealing with a president: They are either at his feet or at his throat.
Democrats took money from Enron, too, but not nearly as much — and not so much as to prevent them from trying to whack Bush with all they’ve got. They can’t go after him on the war, and their efforts to take him down on the economy (initiated recently by Tom Daschle) have gone nowhere. Rep. Henry Waxman’s committee will bore in diligently, but the gripping theater is more likely to be found in Sen. Joe Lieberman’s committee: He’s running for president.
A SCANDAL WITH LITTLE-GUY APPEAL
Enron isn’t an abstract story of corporate greed, fit only for the pages of Investors’ Daily. Thousands, if not millions, of little-guy investors were hurt, and their human interest stories are accessible to all. Also, some sophisticated class-action lawyers are involved, and they will use the courts to unearth anything Congress leaves behind.
Then there is the question of how the White House reacts. So far, it has remained calm. But this isn’t Austin, and it isn’t the presidential campaign trail, and Bush & Co. aren’t going to be able to “control” a story as sprawling and symbolic as this one. As governor of Texas and the scion of the Bush family, Dubya was able to charm and/or intimidate political Texas. Washington is too big for that, and there are too many other forces that have an interest in keeping the story going. The only way to “kill” a story like this one is to be candid and let it run its course — until the press room empties out. |
