by Peter Kinder

"As a card-carrying scandalmonger, I am moved to ask: Where's the scandal?" --William Safire, 14 Jan. 2002.\1

"Indignation is a precondition for whatever new laws and regulations are required to prevent behavior such as Enron's. It has been said that the absence of honest emotion is the shared characteristic of American politics and professional wrestling. One would like to hear from President Bush, regarding Enron's executives...." -George F. Will, 16 Jan. 2002.\2

So, now we know from two impeachable sources: "Houston, we have a problem."\3 And the problem's name is "Enron" - a nonsense word made up to keep the world from knowing what it did and who ran it. But, "Enron" will soon take a meaning; it will become a noun representing the evils of the late 20th century American political economy.

***

William Safire, Spiro Agnew's speech writer and the New York Times apologist for the two Bushes, Reagan and Nixon knows a scandal when he sees one. He kept "Whitewater" alive for eight years. His praise of the Bush II administration's failure in October and November to do anything in response to Enron's "heads ups" sounds faint indeed.

It will be interesting to learn whether the only Bush administration response was sympathetic clucks over the phone. Or, did officials respond as the head of Arthur Andersen's Enron audit team: "Man the shredders!"

And, was the timing just co-incidental of the November 2001 Executive Order restricting access to Bush I and Reagan presidential records and the deposit of Bush II's gubernatorial papers in a federal facility not subject to the Texas freedom of information act.

Say what you like about the Republicans, they know how to handle a scandal. And that old Nixon hand, William Safire, learned his "Watergate" lessons well.

***

George F. Will is the most craven of the conservative punditocracy. When it's time to head for the hills, he finds the highest one and from it decries the very behavior he's encouraged for years. His column today concludes:

"Now, Washington takes center stage. By casting a cool eye on Enron's debris and those who made it, government can strengthen an economic system that depends on it."\4

I don't believe in shooting fish in a barrel. One should put them on the ground and give them a running chance. So, I won't recall Will's devotion to deregulation, to the corporatization of government, to the defanging or abolition of regulatory agencies. No, as I admire this walking catfish hightailing it toward the Blue Ridge, I will merely quote him:

"[The Enron collapse] will remind everyone ... that a mature capitalist economy is a government project. A properly functioning free-market system does not spring spontaneously from society's soil as dandelions spring from suburban lawns. Rather, it is a complex creation of laws and mores that guarantee among much else, transparency, meaning a sufficient stream ... of reliable information about the condition and conduct of corporations."\5

After reading this paragraph, my first thought, having triple-checked the byline, was that George Will had done a Stephen Ambrose on Paul Krugman. Then I reread the article's first sentence and knew it could only be words of the master:

"Narcissistic and even solipsistic, as usual, Washington thinks Enron's collapse is primarily a Washington, meaning a political, story."\6

Quick: think what "narcissistic" means and relate it to your guess on "solipsistic"\7 while trying to keep straight how "Washington" might be wrong in seeing Enron in political terms. Confused? You've just been Willed.

By column's end, quoted earlier, Will has pointed to "corporate corruption", vacillation by Bush II, the accountants' failure and the "coziness between corporations and their directors". All to get to the point that "government" has to "strengthen" the "economic system".\8

In short, the "Washington" of the first paragraph has the Enron situation dead right. What we have is a political problem of the first magnitude.

***

In law, accounting and investigative reporting, there is only one great rule: "Follow the money." But in this case, following the money will keep us from addressing the great questions Enron forced upon us.

According to Edward Ericson, Jr. , Enron has "2,832 subsidiaries, of which 874 are registered in the Cayman Islands or other tax and bank secrecy havens."\9 So, for years to come, we will be treated to stories about how money flowed fro and to - and to whom.

And, diverting stories, just like Will's, they will be because they will focus on the scandal. They will obscure the fact that "Enron" is to the 1980s and 90s as "Teapot Dome" was to the 1920s and "Standard Oil was to the 1890s. "Enron" cuts across a broad range of political issues. Like it or not, we - the people, the polity - will have to address in "Enron":

• The role of money in elections.
  
  
• The relationship between corporations and society - are corporations "accountable" to society or merely "responsible"?
  
  
• The desirability of regulating "natural" monopolies, such as electric utilities.
  
  
• The social, military, environmental, societal and global costs of relying on oil and natural gas as our principal energy sources.
  
  
• The consequences to the nation's interests of corporations acting as independent agents in foreign countries - as Enron did disastrously in India.
  
  
• The social consequences of shifting the management of retirement assets to the individual via 401k plans and the like.
  
  
• The continued benefits of absolving shareholders of responsibility for corporate mis- and mal-feasance while spreading their costs, through bankruptcy, across society.
  
  
• The viability in the modern world of the corporate form - something Adam Smith doubted in 1776.
  
  
• The social benefits of co-operative programs between industries and environmental regulators.
  
  
• The ability of the states to regulate corporate behavior.

This list hardly exhausts the political questions "Enron" poses. They could not have arisen at a worse time.

The US and the West remain deeply shaken by the 9/11 attacks. The US is led by an administration whose legitimacy is questioned by friend and foe alike and which has shown no capacity or desire to build and lead coalitions toward higher ends.

But, there is never a good time for a perfect storm. Perhaps the heightened sense of vulnerability we Americans feel will lead us to address "Enron" and the festering sores caused by the corporations unfettered of the 1980s and 90s.

I suspect it will.

Peter Kinder is the president of KLD Research & Analytics, Inc., a Boston-based company specializing in social investment research on corporations.

Copyright © 2002 by Peter D. Kinder

Endnotes
1. William Safire, "Andersengate", New York Times, 14 January 2002.
2. George F. Will, "From Evasion to Outrage about Enron", Boston Globe, 16 January 2002, p. A13. Were George Orwell alive, he could revise his essay, "Politics and the English Language" replacing all his 1948 examples with sentences and paragraphs from this column.
3. The immortal words of an Apollo XIII astronaut to Mission Control after the explosion that caused the spacecraft to lose its guidance systems and computers.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. According to The American Heritage Dictionary, 3/e, "solipsism" is "1. The theory that the self is the only thing that can be known and verified. 2. The theory or view that the self is the only reality."
8. Will's column seems to me a series of rhetorical thrusts designed to draw eyes from the central players in this drama: the Bush II administration and the Texas Republicans in the House and Senate. It is as if when Toto exposed the Wizard, a munchkin raced about the audience hall trying to divert attention from "the man behind the curtain".
9. Edward Ericson, Jr., "The Scoop: The Enron Story You Haven't Heard", Hartford Advocate (CT), 10 January 2002.

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