What Scandal?
The Clinton and Bush administrations were following, not money, but their ideologies.

January 17, 2002 1:00 p.m.

hen a political scandal doesn't feature enough political wrongdoing to sustain itself, it becomes a campaign-finance scandal — a diminished thing perhaps, but still enough to support any number of earnest clichés.

In the case of Enron, the controversy has quickly gone from a scandal about Enron possibly getting favors for its political contributions to a scandal about Enron giving political contributions.

The problem for the follow-the-money campaign-finance reformers is that everyone in the scandal played to type. The Clinton administration, recipient of Enron largesse, did Enron a big favor by signing the Kyoto treaty, which would have created major new business for Enron had it gone into effect.

Does anyone really believe the Clinton's administration signed the global-warming treaty because of Enron contributions?

The Bush administration, in turn, aggressively pushed energy deregulation, which was in accordance with Enron's interests. This leads some critics to say that Enron "wrote" the Bush energy plan, but are we supposed to believe that Bush would support energy re-regulation if it weren't for Enron?

Both the Clinton and Bush administrations were following, not money, but their ideologies. What's the scandal in that?

The real test of whether ideas or money mattered most was when those distress calls from Ken Lay came into Washington, and the Bush administration — to the chagrin of Henry Waxman, it turns out — didn't do anything.

The Bush administration chose its philosophical commitment to the rough-and-tumble free market over its sheer financial interest in helping a contributor.

The quasi-Marxists who think that campaign donations trump all, that the material — the money — always triumphs over the immaterial — the ideas — will never be able to wrap their minds around this.

Their fallback argument is that campaign donations must be buying something.

But if there's anything we know after the tech bubble bursting, it is that just because you spend money on something it doesn't mean that it is a good investment.

The most tangible thing Enron got was "access." This means that Lay got a presidential nickname, a raft of inaugural-ball tickets, and the occasional joshing note from Bush or Don Evans or some RNC functionary. (Quick, call the police!)

It also means, of course, that Enron got a place at the table during energy-policy deliberations. But wouldn't the nation's seventh largest company have an important voice in policy deliberations affecting it anyway? And, more importantly, shouldn't it?

Shouldn't Enron have a bigger voice than, say, Joe's Gas?

Maybe not. But that's why outfits like Joe's Gas get together to form trade associations and PAC's in Washington that are also denounced by campaign-finance reformers as a blight on the nation's politics.

I don't want to defend Enron's intentions in all of this. I'm sure they would have been happy to take special favors had any been on offer. It certainly was playing a cynical game. In the 2000 campaign season, for instance, Enron roughly split its $1 million-worth of soft-money contributions between Democrats and Republicans.

Campaign-reformers look at that and see some vague, generalized corruption. What we should see is a cynical corporation — through an unintended consequence, to be sure — funding a good thing, namely the activity of the parties, which involves get-out-the-vote efforts, advertising, and public argument about ideas.

The more funding for it, the better.

The political aspect of Enron that may stink the most so far is the special help that the Clinton administration gave it — and many other corporations — with overseas business. But this points to the need for another kind of reform entirely: ending corporate welfare.

The scandal isn't that corporations spend money to fund our political process, but that taxpayers occasionally have to fund the business of those corporations.