GREED, PAIN, EXCESSES
In Wake of Enron, Democrats May Have Opportunity
“The latest New York Times/CBS News Poll,
published today, underscores the image of
a White House run by the upper crust. It
reports that 61 percent of Americans say
big business has too much influence in
the administration. And 50 percent
said the administration's policies favor
the rich; only 14 percent said they favor
the middle class.”
January 27, 2002
By RICHARD L. BERKE
W ASHINGTON -- ONCE they
express their requisite
sympathy for stockholders and
investors in Enron, many
Democrats are downright giddy
over the company's implosion.
Not since Watergate and Richard
M. Nixon's cozying up to
corporate bigwigs wielding bags of
money, they say, has their party
had such an ideal vehicle to
arouse the citizenry and skewer a
Republican president as favoring
monied interests.
"It's Teapot Dome," said Jim
Hightower, the former Texas
agriculture commissioner who
has built a career on speaking for
the disenfranchised. "It's a
perfect populist crusade."
Though, unlike the Harding
administration scandal, no one in
this administration is known to
have acted illegally regarding
Enron.
Stanley B. Greenberg, who
helped devise a populist theme
for Al Gore in the 2000
presidential campaign, said the
Democrats' rallying cry in the
November elections should be:
"The greed is real. The pain is
real. The excesses are real."
And the reality is that the issue
could be potent for the
Democrats, though some are
wary of rushing headlong into
making Enron a political issue
and caution that the company
spread its bounty to both parties.
Yet Enron was far more generous
to Republicans and has closer
ties with Republican officials in
government.
Republicans are especially
vulnerable because Enron
reinforces the long-held
perception that their's is the
party of big business and the
rich. The White House is already
a target because the
administration is stocked with
officials formerly involved with the
oil industry in Texas. Even
religious conservatives, a powerful
constituency for the Republican
Party, are grousing that their
president is showing more fealty
to corporate titans than Christian leaders.
Adding to the image of a party more attuned to corporate
interests than ordinary Americans was the recent election
of Marc Racicot as Republican Party chairman. He refused
to sever his ties to a law firm that has lobbied extensively
for Enron and other companies. The latest New York
Times/CBS News Poll, published today, underscores the
image of a White House run by the upper crust. It reports
that 61 percent of Americans say big business has too
much influence in the administration. And 50 percent
said the administration's policies favor the rich; only 14
percent said they favor the middle class.
Democrats may have the best opportunity to capitalize on
Enron if they do not retreat to the simplistic anti-big
business slogans of decades past. Nearly a century ago,
President Theodore Roosevelt scored by demonizing the
Standard Oil Company as representing the evils of the
newly sprouting corporate giants — and shattering it into
34 pieces.
While the age of trustbusting is long gone, Democrats
could portray Enron as symbolizing the evils of a new
corporate economy fostered by giant stock purchases and
multinational companies. They can expand their
argument and point to other disastrous business
collapses, like Kmart, as evidence that corporations are
running roughshod over working people. "If they're smart,
the Democrats' strategy should be to make Bush into
another shifty-eyed J. R. Ewing," said Kevin Phillips, the
political analyst who wrote "The Politics of Rich and Poor."
"If they dig deep enough, they can strike gold: that this
guy has been up to his neck in every facet of the oil
business in Texas, and it often hasn't reflected well in his
judgment."
But turning Enron into a big-
business-versus-the-little-people bonanza for the
Democrats could be more knotty than it seems — and not
just because Enron spread its largess to Democrats as
well.
For one thing, Democrats can no longer fully disassociate
themselves from industry. President Clinton courted big
business — and it was his White House that presided over
an era of prosperity for corporate America.
There is also a history of populist crusades falling flat.
Most recently, voters were not altogether convinced in the
2000 campaign when Mr. Gore ridiculed the Bush tax cut
proposal as "a form of class warfare on behalf of
billionaires."
In the 1980's, the Democrats' drive to make villains of
junk bond trading firms backfired, as did President Harry
S. Truman's brazen seizure of big steel companies in
1952. "Standing up for the little guy will always be part of
Democratic Party politics," said Senator Evan Bayh of
Indiana, chairman of the centrist Democratic Leadership
Council. "But we suffer from the stereotype of resenting
people who have been successful even if they have done
nothing wrong. We don't want to play into that
stereotype."
There is no question that Enron can help Democrats stir
up the party faithful, just like Whitewater galvanized
hard-core conservatives. The question is whether the
Democrats can broaden the appeal of the issue.
To do so, they cannot merely repeat the party's mantra
that Republicans favor the rich, but would have to take
the argument to the next step: not only that Republicans
are responding to corporate interests, but that they are
doing so at the expense of ordinary citizens. Even some
religious conservatives have accused the administration of
overlooking their interests in favor of big business. Many
were furious when, at the Republican Party's winter
meeting in Austin, Tex., this month, the party installed
Lewis Eisenberg, an abortion rights activist who has
contributed to Democrats, to head the party's drive to
raise money. Mr. Eisenberg's appeal: he's close to
business and knows how to get big donations.
"It was a terrible appointment," said Gary Bauer, a
conservative who ran for the Republican presidential
nomination in 2000. "Couldn't they find a chief
fund-raiser who actually agreed with the party's
platform?"
On the other side of the political spectrum, Mr. Hightower
said it would not be sufficient for Democrats to assure
voters that "we're on your side." He said the party needed
to take its argument several steps forward. "We need to
wrap up not just the corruption of money in politics but
the actual damage to people and pensions and the
disrespect for workers and the flim-flam of the new
economy," he said.
Recognizing that such populist appeals could succeed,
Mr. Bush, in a striking change of tone, said last week he
was outraged by the conduct of Enron, and noted that his
own mother-in-law had lost more than $8,000 in Enron
shares.
AS part of their offensive, Republicans are seeking to shift
the spotlight to Democrats who took Enron donations, and
they portray the Enron debacle as a business scandal with
no partisan bounds. In fact, White House officials are
questioning why regulators in the Clinton administration
did not pick up on the transgressions at Enron.
Dismissing the Democrats as trying to politicize the Enron
collapse, Dan Bartlett, the White House communications
director, said, "The American people are savvy enough to
understand the difference between political rhetoric and
fact — and the fact is that the administration did not
make any attempts to help Enron."
James Carville, the Democratic consultant, countered that
the question is not whether the administration acted to
save Enron. "It's not what they did when they went belly
up," he said. "It's what they did when Enron had money."
But, like many other Democrats, Mr. Carville is not free of
Enron entanglements. He said he agreed to deliver a
speech last October for the corporation for his usual big
fee. The company went belly up, so he never could offer
his words of wisdom. But chances are, his remarks would
not have been about corporate greed.
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