Posted on 01/10/2002 7:00:04 AM PST by brbethke
Enron is not Bush's Whitewater Commentary: It will be worse
By David Callaway, CBS.MarketWatch.com Last Update: 12:10 AM ET Jan. 10, 2002
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) - The Enron Corp. debacle won't be President Bush's Whitewater. It will be much worse.
Unlike the financial sideshow over a twenty-year-old failed land deal that dogged the Clinton administration, the collapse of the nation's largest energy trader into the nation's largest bankruptcy last month is set to go straight to the heart of exposing what is wrong with the way the Bush administration is conducting itself these days.
Once a buyer for Enron's (ENE: news, chart, profile) energy-trading business is announced Thursday in New York, this story is going to shift in dramatic fashion to Washington D.C., where there are already eight separate congressional probes into the collapse, one Justice Department investigation, and scores of unanswered questions. Many of them concern the White House.
Don't expect to see either Bush or Vice President Cheney directly linked to the financial shenanigans that brought Enron down. They won't be. This is not about finding a smoking gun, as much as some Democrats might wish it were.
What it is about, and what the public will get to hear and read about in wrenching detail over the coming months, is how business gets done down in Texas. How a small group of business leaders exert enormous clout over Bush and his team in getting the rules changed to their benefit.
It will explain why Bush has locked up presidential records, locked out any voices opposed to his pro-business agenda and rammed through an expensive economic plan that wiped out the budget surplus but to date hasn't had any positive effect on the economy.
It will explain what influence Enron Chief Executive Ken Lay and his advisers had with Cheney and his energy taskforce when they met six times last year while the Vice President was putting together the administration's energy policy.
And it will explain why Bush is now thinking about acting on a proposal from that very taskforce that seeks to roll back a key provision of the Clean Air Act that helps keep factory pollution down by requiring new controls when old plants are upgraded.
A history of seeking favor
Business leaders have always sought favors from politicians. That's nothing new. But in the case of Enron and Lay, a night in the Lincoln Bedroom was never going to be enough.
Enron cultivated Bush from the time he first decided to run for governor of Texas, with executives donating a total of $623,000 to his two gubernatorial campaigns and presidential campaign, according to The Center for Public Integrity.
The company played a major role in Bush's decision to deregulate the Texas energy markets in 1999. It played a major role in Cheney's energy taskforce last year, meeting with the Vice President's staff right up until a week before it stunned Wall Street in October by slashing its shareholder equity by $1.2 billion to cover losses in its off-balance sheet partnerships.
And Lay, who donated $100,000 to the Bush Inaugural, remains mired in a controversy about whether a curious phone conversation he had with Federal Energy Regulatory Commission head Curtis Hebert last May had anything to do with Hebert's replacement by Bush last summer with the head of the Texas Public Utility Commission.
This is just the beginning of what is going to come out once investigators do a little more digging, and once Lay and his minions are required to testify before Congress. Expect a steady diet of revelations about the extent of the energy giant's influence, at state, national and even international levels.
Enron won't bring down Bush. He remains enormously popular for his handling of the war and the rebuilding of the country's psyche after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But it will be a major thorn in his side through the rest of this presidential term, and may even play a role in the next election, depending on what comes out.
Enron the company will soon be gone. But Enron, the symbol of how big business and big politics conspire to sometimes fix the game, is just starting to dawn on the national conscious.
It's an ugly story. One that explains a lot about what's going on in our nation's capital right now. And it's only just beginning.
David Callaway is executive editor of CBS.MarketWatch.com.
Wishful thinking. Of course the Democrats and the media lapdogs will attempt to link Bush and Cheney to Enron and constantly infer that somehow, some way they did something sinister and evil but it's a bunch of garbage and not only is there no smoking gun, there isn't even a gun!
I seriously doubt this will affect Bush's popularity as most folks don't care much about a failed energy company unless they held stock in it. Even then, the attempts to make Bush/Cheney villains in the Enron mess won't wash as they had nothing to do with the cause of the collapse.
It'll be interesting to see the liberal media try and pound this into the ground (as they will) and make it 'Bush's Whitewater' - and how the public responds.
Bill Clinton a friend of Ken Lay - received $100,000 from Enron 4 years ago
And another
Political Influence Wins Contracts For Gas Company {ENRON'S CLINTON CONNECTIONS}
And another
Clinton-Gore sales team eased Enron's path to success
I think there's enough blame to go around.
There has not been an investigation yet and CBS is alredy telling us "what it is about, and what the public will get to hear and read...."
Sounds an awful lot like the reporter writing the lead in advance of getting the story. Not surprising. In fact, it has become so blatant that CBS admits it without so much as a blush.
Indeed.... and would that be the SAME Danny Rather who went approimately 4 MONTHS last summer without even ONCE mentioning the name "Gary Condit"????
I guess "news" is whatever DAN says is news.
Maybe we can even uncover the real cause of the death of Ron Brown and the circumstances surrounding his demise.
I've never seen so much wishful thinking in a business column in my life.
The Bush Administration never did a thing for Enron. The accusation that Bush pushed Texas electricity deregulation (something which is working out great, by the way) as a favor to Enron is simply contrary to the facts. That was something which had its own momentum and I don't recall Bush actively pushing it anyway. The Texas governor has very limited input into legislative activities.
The Democrats really want Enron to be an albatross around the neck of this Administration but there simply isn't any substance to their charges.
Companies fail and it's not the government's job to make sure that they don't.
Enron gave plenty of money to Democrats, too, including Sheila Jackson-Lee, Mayor Lee Pee Brown of Houston, and Ken Bentsen, the congressman who is trying to win Phil Gramm's senate seat.
The emptiness of these charges only proves that the Democrats don't have ANYTHING to use to go after Bush.
Where was marketwatch when Clinton was selling necular secrets to the chicoms for campaign cash and shtting down US coal development to help Riady.
They make me puke. They even admit Bush and Cheney actually didn't do anything for Enron, a pure smear. But this is CBS what should we expect.
Worse? What could be worse?
Gasp! Don't tell me CBS, that instead of Bush being tainted by this scandal, the Democrats are!
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