GOP image at risk in Enron saga
As probes of White House dealings with firm grow, the perception of cozy ties to business may hurt Bush most. coziness with business, biggest risk may be with voters. For Bush, a big one is that more voters will see him - and his party - as too closely aligned with big business.
The facts of the Enron case as revealed so far may not be the biggest danger to the White House. Nor is it the investigative drumbeat of eight congressional committees and the Justice Department pursuing the case.
Rather, analysts say, what most threatens the president is revelations about just how close-knit the ties were between the Bush team and Enron executives - the kind of detail that fuels perceptions of the Republican Party as an exclusive club for big money.
George W. Bush, who has tried to temper that one-dimensional image of his party via his "compassionate conservative" slogan, knows the damage this stereotype can do - especially in an election year, and especially when a recession is pinching "the little guy."
"During the weak economy, the worst thing to have is the perception that you cater to the well-heeled," says Marshall Wittmann, a political analyst at the conservative Hudson Institute here. "There may very well be no misdeeds at all, but I don't think that's the vulnerability. The vulnerability is the administration's cozy corporatism."
That tight relationship is underscored by developments in the Enron case so far. Last week the administration announced that Kenneth Lay, Enron's chairman, called Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and Commerce Secretary Don Evans, a long-time friend, for help last fall before his firm collapsed in America's biggest bankruptcy ever. Enron's president also made several calls to the assistant Treasury secretary, seeking help with bank loans. In all instances, according to the administration, the Cabinet officials declined to offer aid.
President Bush says he never discussed Enron's financial difficulties with Mr. Lay, a Texas friend and the president's biggest individual financial contributor. The administration has been adamant that it gave no favors in return for all Enron's financial backing.
That support runs as deep as a Texas oil well. The Enron chief has donated about $650,000 to Mr. Bush over the course of his political career. In the 2000 election, the Houston-based company, including Lay, doled out $2.4 million in donations - about three-quarters of that to Republican candidates. Attorney General John Ashcroft has recused himself from the Justice Department's criminal investigation, because Enron executives donated more than $50,000 to his failed bid for a US Senate seat.
The administration has recently acknowledged that Bush's task force on energy met six times with Enron officials as it formulated its energy plan last year. Vice President Dick Cheney, who, like the president, is a former Texas oil executive, headed the task force. The Government Accounting Office is waiting for Mr. Cheney to hand over details of meetings with Enron and other industry officials.
Democrats so far haven't jumped on the Enron episode with undisguised relish, but they are nonetheless using it to try to reinforce the image of a president beholden to big business.
"Enron now becomes shorthand for Democrats trying to convey to the American people the irresponsible way that the Bush administration ... puts special interests above those of the average American," says Jennifer Palmieri, Democratic National Committee spokeswoman.
Echoing Rep. Henry Waxman of California, the senior Democrat on the House Committee on Government Reform, she wonders why Bush administration officials, once aware of Enron's financial distress, "didn't do anything" to prevent the loss of retirement savings of thousands of the firm's employees.
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