Here's a columnist who's NOT shy but IMO right on target...
Bush sets a bad example
By DAVID LAZARUS
The San Francisco Chronicle
Wednesday, July 17, 2002
So I'm wondering: How can a White House so obsessed with secrecy convince corporate America of the merits of full and timely disclosure?
For instance, President Bush won't authorize the Securities and Exchange Commission to release information about its insider-trading probe into his stock deals because the matter is "ancient history."
Bush says the minutes of board meetings when he was a director of Harken Energy clear him of charges of financial misdeeds. But Harken won't release them and Bush isn't calling on the company to come clean.
Bush continues changing his story on why he was as late as eight months in filing federally mandated documents related to more than $1 million in stock sales. (His latest version: "I still haven't figured it out completely.")
Meanwhile, the White House still refuses to release records of Vice President Dick Cheney's meetings with energy-industry bigwigs, including senior Enron execs, while concocting national energy policy last year.
"This is an administration that seems to have stolen a page from Richard Nixon's playbook," said Ben Hermalin, acting dean of UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business.
No one disputes that scandal-tainted U.S. companies are in need of a serious kick in the pants. The post-Enron, post-WorldCom movement in Washington to clamp down on accounting fraud is a much-needed step in the right direction.
But the sad fact is that until Bush manages to put his own business problems behind him -- something he has been glaringly unwilling to do -- his calls for reform will be all but laughed off by corporate chieftains believing that if the president can withhold information, so can they.
Investors in turn are left out in the cold. The Dow Jones industrial average got slapped around yet again Tuesday, falling another 166.08 points to 8,473.11.
"The White House is trying to have it both ways," Hermalin said, "and will probably look pretty silly in the end."
Bush was at it again Monday, expanding on his corporate-accountability theme by telling an audience that "in order to be a responsible American, you must behave responsibly."
So when the president, as a member of Harken's audit committee, signed off on an internal business deal in 1989 that the SEC ruled was a deliberate effort to hide millions of dollars in losses, he was being unpatriotic?
Of course not. But until Bush can put to rest questions about his past actions as a businessman, he will get nowhere in his ostensibly sincere efforts to clean America's corporate house.
Secrecy is not the answer. Like a parent who says, "Do as I say, not as I do," Bush is unable to lead by example.
Last week, for example, he called for an end to corporations extending sweetheart loans to company officers. It turns out, though, that Bush himself received such loans from Harken.
On Monday, newly released Harken documents showed that Bush signed an agreement in 1990 promising not to sell any shares in the company for at least six months.
Less than three months later, though, as Harken faced a severe financial crisis, Bush sold off nearly $850,000 worth of stock. The company's share price subsequently tanked.
Bush only muddies the water each time he insists that his own troubles were merely misunderstandings, whereas problems at Enron, WorldCom and a host of other companies were far more serious.
"It just smells," said Marc Drizin, a specialist in business ethics at market researcher Walker Information in Indianapolis. "And you know what it smells like? It smells like Whitewater."
It does indeed.
Even though former President Bill Clinton was ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing in the suspicious land deal, his attempts at covering up the past made things seem worse than they were (and prompted investigators to turn over every possible stone, including one named Monica).
Bush, you'd think, would have learned a lesson from that whole sorry episode.
"If there's nothing to hide, then just show us," Drizin said of Bush's SEC files and Cheney's meetings with energy execs. "Otherwise, we all think there's something there."
Call it guilt by nondisclosure. WorldCom officials refused to testify in Congress the other day, just as Enron officials pleaded the Fifth before them, and an anxious public has little recourse but to assume the worst.
Each time Bush or a member of his team similarly declines to release information, especially in the current political climate, they all but tell business leaders that secrecy is the smart policy.
It isn't, especially now. But until the White House realizes this, real corporate reform will remain elusive.
Nothing secret about that.
A NEW LEAF: Speaking of business ethics, some of the country's biggest energy traders gathered in the Bay Area Tuesday for a one-day seminar on responsible behavior, as opposed to the greedy, snake-in-the-grass conduct that now characterizes the industry.
"You've got to start somewhere," said Gary Ackerman, executive director of the Western Power Trading Forum, the Menlo Park group that hosted the confab. "This was one small step in the right direction."
I feel better already.
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