Laying low - Capitol Ideas - Brief Article

Chief Executive, The, Feb, 2002 by David E. Sanger

The fall from grace of the best-connected executive in Washington's recent history, Enron's Kenneth Lay, should serve as a cautionary tale about the hazards of spreading corporate money around the nation's capital. Not only does cash pervert the system when crisis strikes, it may actually make it harder for a CEO to get help from Washington allies. That is what Lay, Enron's chairman and President Bush's old and close friend, learned as his company spun into bankruptcy.

Over the past decade, few executives have been more conspicuous in Washington than Lay. He spread cash around. In the 2000 election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, Enron's political action committees and its employees spent $2,446,000, including "soft money" donations. While both parties benefited from Enron's largess, nearly three-quarters of it went to the Republicans. Eight times during Bush's campaign in 1999, the presidential candidate flew on an Enron corporate jet.

The company's Washington lobbying expenses in the year 2000 topped $2 million. And when it came time for the Bush Administration to put together an energy package, Enron's leaders and its lobbyists boasted about their access to Vice President Dick Cheney and his staff. "These guys had the town wired," one Senate aide involved in energy legislation said to me as Enron's troubles emerged last year. "They didn't get everything they wanted. But they got an awful lot."

Indeed, they even got a lot from Democrats. On a trip to India several years ago, I watched Robert Rubin, then Clinton's treasury secretary, argue with Indian officials about how much ordinary Indian consumers would be charged for electric power. Enron was on the right side of that fight: It was demonstrating to the Indian government that joining a global economy meant charging global prices. But it certainly knew how to bring in the biggest guns to deliver its message.

Now it is becoming clear that Enron's aggressiveness cost it a lot, too. Once the company got into trouble, the very size of its political contributions made Enron radioactive. Political leaders who could have expressed sympathy, and perhaps helped the company avoid massive layoffs, feared that the contributions would make it appear that they had been bought. So they fled for the hills.

Bush and his aides, who had rushed to save the airlines after September 11, made no such offer to rescue Enron. All it got from Washington was a Democratic investigation and the first of many hearings into how investors were conned. When reporters asked for comment on Enron's collapse, the White House said almost nothing about its business practices and instead focused on the fate of its laid-off workers. It was very troubling" to read about those "who had their Enron stock locked up in their 401(k) plans and then saw their savings dissipate," Bush said.

Late last year, Lay, who once had been eager to walk Congress' halls, announced he was too busy with bankruptcy proceedings to testify voluntarily at a hearing exploring the collapse. That seemed like a particular affront: an executive who was happy to lobby for deregulation, but who refused to talk about bad news.

So perhaps it should have been no surprise that Enron's donations suddenly became as welcome as a anthrax-filled envelope. The Nation Republican Senatorial Committee sent back a $100,000 check, The Washington Post reported, after concluding "it was appropriate to give it back." The Republican Governor's Association returned $60,000.

There are lessons in Enron's failure, some for CEOs, most for Washington. Enron's contributions helped turn a small company into a global player, and it prompted Congress to pass considerable legislation deregulating an over-regulated industry. But the money also blinded Washington's leaders to the risks of that deregulation. Enron's rise and fall was, in many ways, reminiscent of the savings and loan scandals of the '80s. The savings and loans, like Enron had used big contributions to grease their way into new lines of business Washington never fully considered the risks, and the losers included investors and employees.

But at least the depositors in the savings and loan disaster were bailed out. No such luck for Enron's investors or employees.

David E. Sanger covers the White House for The New York Times. Previously he served as the Tokyo bureau chief.