WASHINGTON, Jan. 22 (UPI) -- Sometimes businesses fail. In the market capitalist system, failure is an accepted risk. But even when with that factored in, the Enron bankruptcy stinks.
The public sifting of the rubble that was once America's seventh-largest corporation has generated a lot of suspicion and a considerable degree of innuendo that allows reasonable people to conclude that laws were broken and that some of the people responsible belong in jail.
In the years leading up to its collapse, Enron tossed money around Washington as though it was not worth the paper on which it was printed -- something Enron employees who were holding company shares in their retirement funds regrettably discovered to be true.
The political process is severely tainted by the Enron scandal. Politicians of both parties must explain to the voters why the fact that their electoral ambitions were furthered by dirty money should not be held against them.
The generous support Enron gave to the GOP and to George W. Bush during his public life lends the collapse a degree of sex appeal that other high-profile busts have lacked. Plenty of politicians -- freshman Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., comes to mind -- got their fingers burned when all those dot-coms evolved into dot bombs.
The past but nevertheless generous largess of Democrat National Chairman Terry McAuliffe toward Bill and Hillary Clinton and House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., also generated controversy -- but nothing like what the White House is currently facing.
This is due in part to the luck of the draw. When you are the president, your behavior gets closer scrutiny, as does that of your friends. By most any definition, Enron Chairman Ken Lay classifies as a friend.
As most of the last nine years bear witness, an effective cut-and-run strategy also helps. The White House has not learned how to do this effectively, and the slow drip of new revelations doesn't make it any easier.
Given the many connections between the Bush administration, the GOP and Enron, a clean break may not be possible. But the White House's apparent lack of candor is also working against it.
Right now there are lots of reporters and lots of Democrats who are dangling poles over the White House. The rumors, charges and revelations that make up the current fishing expedition are very hard to defend against, especially when people are unwilling to believe there are no fish.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, who typically does well under fire, has adopted an argumentative tone where Enron is concerned. Reporters are beginning to parse his statements, along with those of administration officials, looking for unstated caveats that demonstrate a lack of candor.
Challenging the curious to make an accusation, as Fleischer had done recently, does not deflect attention, it attracts it.
The current problem has some of its seeds in the failure of the administration to release the names of those with whom the Cheney energy task force met while gathering information for its report.
The vice president's claim that a constitutional issue exists here is not without merit. Congress passed laws governing the conduct of task forces like Cheney's. The executive branch, under the doctrine of the separation of powers, does not have to tell the Congress everything it does in its internal workings. They are certainly under no obligation to provide information to individual members of Congress who are merely seeking ammunition with which they can shoot at political targets in search of a bull's-eye.
Unfortunately for the White House, the failure to disclose that information, even for the most appropriate of reasons, now adds to the Enron mess. Enron was at its heart an energy company. The failure to release the names adds to the appearance that there is more to the administration's involvement then the White House appears willing to acknowledge.
This in turn makes it harder for the president's allies in Congress and supporters in the pundit community to offer a strong defense. Even their friends are afraid another shoe may drop at any time, pulling them down with it.
As far as anyone knows, the administration not only did nothing improper, it took steps that were counter to Enron's financial interests.
Two Cabinet secretaries refused to intervene and help arrange a bailout of the troubled company before it collapsed.
More to the point, the president's decision to abandon the Kyoto protocols on the environment was a devastating blow to the company's future plans.
Any effort to meet the environmental targets specified in the Kyoto accords would have required the United States to shift much its energy consumption from coal to clean-burning natural gas. Anything that mandated higher levels of natural gas consumption would benefit Enron, and they spent a lot of money in Washington trying to make those mandates a reality.
Nevertheless, the facts give every appearance that the administration was in bed with Enron. In contemporary American politics, image is crucial. If something looks bad, it is bad, at least as far as the popular mindset is concerned.
Enron looks bad and the White House needs to come up with a better strategy to assure the American people that its hands are clean.
