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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MSI who wrote (229328)	2/21/2002 2:48:57 AM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

FROM THE OFFICE OF STRATEGIC SCOUNDRELS Re: There's no looting like patriotic looting "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." -Samuel Johnson latimes.com SCANDAL: Last Refuge of a Politician in Trouble - When the going gets tough, the tough talk about their family pain. By JAMES T. CAMPBELL PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- "Patriotism," Samuel Johnson observed, "is the last refuge of a scoundrel." Surveying the political landscape today, more than two centuries later, Johnson would find ample evidence to confirm his claim. But over the last decade or so, U.S. political leaders have carved out an even more ignominious retreat: family misfortune. With whiffs of Enron wafting through the White House, President Bush resorted to the gambit last week. Having been caught misrepresenting his relationship with former Enron chairman and CEO Kenneth L. Lay, Bush tried a new tack, expressing shock and indignation at the company's callous--and possibly criminal--irresponsibility. Adopting the posture of aggrieved family member, he announced that the victims of Enron's perfidy included his own mother-in-law. Unlike thousands of other Enron employees and investors, Bush's mother-in-law, who saw an $8,000 investment go up in smoke, will not lose her home or retirement income. But however hollow it rings, the president's melodramatic gesture commands our attention, for it offers a limpid illustration of an increasingly popular recourse among U.S. leaders. Put in the form of an adage: When the going gets tough, the tough talk about their family pain. The strategy has been abundantly evident in recent days. After hasty consultations with a former Enron public-relations official, Linda Lay, wife of the company's former chairman, appeared in a two-part interview on NBC's "Today" show. Sitting in her elegantly appointed home, a tearful Lay portrayed her husband as a "decent" man duped by underlings, a "victim" of others' deceit. Along with the couple's five children (all from previous marriages), she insisted that the company's collapse "has been a nightmare for the family .... We've all suffered right along with everyone else." Even GOP Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, one of the primary beneficiaries of Enron's political largesse and chief sponsor of the deregulation law that enabled the company to be more than a mundane energy supplier, has donned the mantle of victim. In an interview with a Dallas newspaper, Gramm announced that his wife, Wendy, a member of the Enron board, had lost more than $600,000 in deferred compensation when the company declared bankruptcy. The luster of victimhood, Gramm may be betting, will distract voters from questioning the propriety of him pushing sweetheart legislation on behalf of a company, then turning around and accepting, through his wife, hundreds of thousands of dollars from that company. For those who savor irony, it is delicious to watch Republican leaders playing this victim-by-proxy game, after years of hearing them devalue the suffering of others with talk of responsibility and rugged individualism.