David Brooks provides some interesting background on the relationship between Enron and members of the Clinton administration in his Weekly Standard piece, “Enron and the Clintonites.” Here’s the gist:
[…] the connections between the Clintonites and Enron remind us that the scandal is not the donations. The scandal is what gets done by federal officials in return for the donations. And while the Clintonites received less money from Enron than the Republicans, the evidence thus far suggests that Democrats extended more favors to Enron than Republicans. That suggests that the nascent Enron scandal may not end up helping Democrats as much as they now think.
Make no mistake, though: The press corps is in full frenzy over what the Bush administration may or may not have done to help Enron as it was going down the tubes–though there is no evidence the Bush administration did anything beyond take phone calls from desperate Enron executives. But the real story here is not about lawbreaking or extraordinary behavior. It is about what has become standard practice in Washington every day.
When corporations make political donations, the money is generally not used to lobby for free market reforms–although Enron did some of that. Rather, the money is used to encourage French-style dirigisme. It is used to lure government into bed with private commercial interests. That’s not an effect conservatives should cheer.
The other day, protein wisdom’s Victor Milkwhite posted an entry in response to David Callaway’s CBS Marketwatch piece, which Victor thought strained too hard to classify the unfolding Enron mess a disaster for Bushies — though no evidence links Bush to any wrong doing. In fact, the only real “evidence” that speaks to the present administration’s role in the demise of Enron seems to be Enron’s actual demise; the orgiastic and sneering emails we’ve received screeching about “big business’s comeuppance” and our “puppet President” notwithstanding, the facts revealed thus far seem to indicate that a panicky Enron tried to press for an extension of credit, only to be rebuffed by the White House.
Ken Layne has a nice pithy summary of the whole thing:
What have we learned, then? Bush’s friend and political supporter since the 1970s and fellow energy-industry guy, Kenneth Lay, runs a company that has completely disintegrated, and now that company’s executives are being investigated by the Justice Department for criminal activity. To me — to anyone sane, I’d imagine — that shows even being a friend and big financial supporter of the president of the United States can’t keep a crooked company from falling apart and being investigated by the feds.
Future revelations could prove me wrong, certainly — but at present, it looks as if the Dems’ determined desire to assail Bush’s approval rating by any means (remember the “conservatives-as-Taliban” garbage? Or the stink over military tribunals and other “civil liberties” devestations?) has led them to back an interpretation of the Enron story that’s all puff and no pastry. If this proves to be the case, there’ll be more than a few big time reporters out there pulling feathers out from between their teeth for months to come. Just one of the consequences of having to eat so much crow…
[Further reading: WorldNetDaily]
—–