Kenny Boy, meet Brownie

Howard Fineman • E-mail

WASHINGTON - If you want a date to mark the beginning of the end of the Bush Era in American life, you may as well make it this one: May 25, 2006. The Enron jury in Houston didn’t just put the wood to Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling. The jurors took a chain saw to the moral claims of the Texas-based corporate culture that had helped fuel the rise to power of President George W. Bush.

First, caveats. There’s no evidence that the president or anyone in his entourage knew about or benefited financially from the house of cards that Lay and Skilling built — and that a federal jury now has found to have been an edifice of fraud.

The Bush Crowd was old school in the energy bidness, and viewed Lay & Co., as hustling parvenus who had no real interest in finding and pumping oil — what real men in Texas do.

Most of what Enron concocted was assembled in the go-go Clinton years. Bush’s idea of an oil man was his old Bible Study buddy, the upright, clean-as-a-whistle Don Evans. As the Enron scam was falling apart, Lay frantically sought help from Evans — by then the Commerce Secretary -- among others (including Democrats such as former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin). He got nowhere, and had the chutzpah to be bitter about it.

Ultimately, Bush’s Justice Department pressed the case against Enron — and won.

Still, when the history books are written, the debit side of the Bush Era ledger will include a line labeled “Kenny Boy.” That’s the nickname Bush gave the guy he later claimed he barely knew.

As Texas governor from 1995 to 2000, Bush and consiglieri Karl Rove cultivated the Enronites for their vast connections and money; more than that, Bush linked arms with Lay in the belief that market forces alone should guide the production, distribution and use of energy. But the theory ran riot at Enron, giving  license to corporate buccaneers who blithely screwed consumers, employees and shareholders alike. The old saying applies to Enron: you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.

There are almost three years left of the Bush presidency, so it’s obviously premature to close the book, but it isn’t too early to start writing it. Here are a few of the headlines in the entries that have accumulated so far.

On the plus side

• ECONOMIC RESILIENCE: Commentators made fun of Bush for advising Americans to go shopping after 9/11, but he had a valid aim in saying so. Osama Bin Laden himself said that his goal was to cripple the American economy, and since two thirds of that economy is based on consumer spending, the president’s instincts were on target. Analysts rightly wring their hands about the twin deficits in the federal budget and in the balance of trade. But in the face of the most devastating attack on the American homeland ever, the economy’s overall recovery was — and is — remarkable. Did Bush’s stimulative tax cuts help? In the short run, sure.
• NO POST-9/11 ATTACKS ON THE HOMELAND: Americans know that another attack is not only possible, but, perhaps inevitable. The Bush Administration is smart not to make any sweeping claims on this front — they would look not only silly but tragic in an instant. The various Patriot Act and security measures the administration has undertaken are controversial, but voters seem to be willing to give the president considerable leeway — and a measure of approval (the best of all his numbers) for being a Tough Cop. Are we safer here because we are fighting the bad guys “over there?” Again, in the short run, maybe.

On the minus side

• KENNY BOY CULTURE: Lay was among the people Dick Cheney consulted as part of his off-the-record task force on energy policy -- and they were brothers-in-arms in opposition to price caps. Beyond Lay is the growing sense that wealthy CEOs and others in their vicinity are prospering out of proportion to, and at the expense of, average Americans. Overall growth rates are strong, and the rising tide has lifted most boats, but there’s a sense in the country that the gap is growing between the Rich and the Rest. Even though the gap has been growing for years — it was characteristic of Bill Clinton’s time in office — Bush’s tax cuts leave him open to the accusation that he exacerbated the problem.
• THE 16 NIGER WORDS: Bush’s statement that Saddam was trying to buy uranium in Africa, since recanted, is and will forever remain one of the key moments of his presidency. It has come to encapsulate everything that was wrong, or dubious, about the decision to go to war in Iraq – one of the most important decisions any president has ever made. Now we know why Dick Cheney was so upset about attempts to undermine the Niger story: it provided a pathway into deeper questions about the justifications — or lack of them — for war.
• MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: The president was talking about “major combat operations,” and in that sense he was right. But it turned out to be a distinction without a difference, and, in retrospect, the image of him strutting his stuff on the Abraham Lincoln became the photo op from hell — an ironic reminder not of success but of failure.
• HECK OF A JOB BROWNIE: As we approach hurricane season, the country is hoping that New Orleans — and every other vulnerable location — survives intact. But the enduring legacy of Katrina is an eroded faith in leadership at all levels, including the presidency.
• OBL ON THE LOOSE: Just the other day Osama bin Laden emerged from the shadows to defend the innocence of Zacarias Moussaoui. This latest audiotape was a reminder that, nearly five years after 9/11, the mastermind of Al Qaeda remains out there, somewhere. Initially, Americans liked the idea of a president who talked tough about capturing the evildoer, “dead or alive.” But if you want to be sheriff, you gotta get your man.

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