The Axis of Enron

The people who deserve the most thanks for getting the campaign finance reform bill through the House last week are not its sponsors, Reps. Martin Meehan and Chris Shays, though they worked like dogs, fighting off every last, desperate measure that House Republicans threw at them. The folks to whom we owe the greatest debt of gratitude are those Enron employees who lost all of their life savings. Their retirement accounts were sacrificed in a scandal that may have?if the reform bill clears the Senate, as expected, and if George W. Bush signs it, as expected?now netted the legislation the political system has greatly needed. As many have noted, the Enron debacle put the fear of God into many House members and the Bush administration.

Indeed, in recent months opponents of campaign finance reform began to look like heroin addicts who would sell their own mothers into sex slavery for a quick fix. Call me a gloater, but it was supremely delicious to hear that many of those tired old hacks were up until all hours of the night on the House floor, sweating, panting and ultimately going down in flames. House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, nicknamed Mr. Dereg, was among those zealots who led the charge against the bill. Actually, I'm glad he did, because if we're lucky this could be the beginning of the end for this thug: having taken more Enron money than most others in the House, having shepherded through Enron-friendly measures, and representing a district in Texas where hundreds of the presumably now-broke Enron employees live, it will be interesting to see how this plays out for him politically. Many other Republicans, including the President, weren't about to take such a risk.

Frustrated Bushies must have been in a real lather over the past couple of weeks. Since day one of his presidency Bush had been a key obstacle to getting a decent campaign finance bill passed. It was an issue that was championed by his opponent John McCain, a knife stuck in him during the primaries and twisted around with glee. More than that, it went against the way that pro-business Bush and Dick Cheney operate, as oil businessmen themselves as well as politicians. Bush was determined to make sure effective campaign finance reform didn't happen.

But then came the Enron mess. Soon after the House leadership announced a few weeks ago that it would bring the bill to a vote?having little choice at that point, with public outrage about Enron growing?the White House indicated that it wouldn't pressure those wavering House Republicans, and would likely sign whatever bill came to the President's desk. Then The New York Times reported last week that members of the White House staff were sneaking around behind the scenes, doing whatever they could to kill the bill. Exposed, the Bushies seemed to back off again, running like scared little chickens from the big, bad Enron wolf.

That should send a clear message to the Democrats: there's blood in the water, gold in them thar hills, fruit coming off those trees. Bush may claim with increasing bluster that the greatest threat to America is the unlikely three-headed monster called Iran/Iraq/North Korea, but when it comes to what is really scaring the daylights out of this administration, well, the true axis of evil is Enron/Enron/Enron.

This administration loves to prattle on about how it doesn't watch polls. But if the White House wasn't viewing with great alarm the polls showing that the country views Enron as more of a liability for Republicans than Democrats, and if it didn't take note of the polls showing the public overwhelmingly wants campaign finance reform, then why would it back down from its principled position on the issue? A president with a record-high approval rating didn't think he could pressure Republicans in the House on an issue about which he has said he truly believed in? Gee, I thought it was only Bill Clinton who backed down on his beliefs after gauging public opinion. (This also might be a window into why Cheney won't release the information about his energy task force: if in fact the administration so easily caved in on an issue as important as campaign finance reform for fear of public outrage, why won't it back down on what would seem to be the much less important issue of executive privilege for the same reason?unless the real reason is that there's something to hide?)

What Bush's retreat shows is that despite the spin of much of the print media and the blathering tv pundits?who have been soft on Bush since the war on terrorism began?at this moment Bush is not as strong as we've been told and the Democrats are not as weak as we've been told. Yes, with the war on terrorism Bush has the trump card of world affairs, something he can use to obfuscate. And tragically, the often wimpy Democrats are not about to fight Bush on the preposterous military spending the administration has proposed, lest they seem both soft on terrorism and not mindful of workers in many of their own districts who are employed by defense contractors. They're also not going to make a serious effort to roll back tax cuts?going back on anything is always politically costly.

But the campaign finance reform vote, and Bush's Enronphobia, should embolden Democrats on an array of domestic issues through which they can filter the Enron scandal and send the Bushies running scared. It doesn't matter if any wrongdoing or illegal activity is ever uncovered regarding the Bush administration and Enron?and let me make that clear, before the letters from conservatives come pouring in. It's the already established connections between Enron and the White House, which, though not illegal, rightly make people uncomfortable?and Bush clearly knows that. The Democrats can stoke the flames on many issues, from those surrounding energy policy to those regarding the environment, including drilling in Alaska and elsewhere. The Enron connections?highlighted by Cheney's secretiveness on the task force meetings and the Bush retreat on campaign finance reform?make the White House's entire energy policy suspect and weakens it on any legislation that is dramatically pro-business. The tv pundits might like to believe their own yammerings?that Enron is a "business" scandal, not a "political" one?but Enron is already forcing a highly popular president to back down on an issue he claims to have believed in passionately, and which he'd previously indicated he'd fight for to the end. That's pretty "political" to me.

Michelangelo Signorile can be reached at [www.signorile.com](http://www.signorile.com).