Enron Spin Will Define Bush

As they struggle to deal with the incessant developments in the Enron story, President Bush and his advisors undoubtedly are tempted to follow the tried-and-true tactics of the modern political war room: Fight hard to win every news cycle by responding to every new twist and answering every fresh accusation. It is a temptation they must resist.

Instead, the Bush administration should face up to a simple but hard reality: The Enron scandal is going to be nasty, brutish and long. It’s not important what the public thinks about the Enron story today or tomorrow or even next week. What’s important is what the public believes on two days: election day 2002 and election day 2004. The administration should focus on this long-term goal.

Of course, that’s easier said than done. Inside the White House at times like these, there is tremendous pressure to take action that will put the administration in the best possible light on that evening’s news and the next day’s newspapers.

As the Enron story unfolds, we are reminded of our days in the White House during Whitewater: hunkered down, voice mail permanently full of reporters’ questions, briefings resembling World Wrestling Federation smackdowns, document requests piling up like junk mail.

Inside such a maelstrom, bearings are hard to find and mistakes are easy to make.

Although the Enron fiasco presents some difficult problems for the president, he may be able to avoid major damage and shape public opinion in the long term by focusing on the big picture. He should cooperate fully with all inquiries. He and his advisors should be careful not to make any public statements that could undermine his future credibility. And he should show that he understands why this story is so disturbing to average Americans.

During our time at the White House, we learned that it never paid to engage in a public fight over access to documents. These fights inevitably create the perception that you are hiding something--and these fights are inevitably lost. So Vice President Dick Cheney would do well to spare his administration the bruising that it will suffer during the fight and hand over to the General Accounting Office the documents about his energy task force now.

The mystery over withheld Whitewater documents during the first two years of the Clinton administration proved to be far more intriguing than the contents of those documents themselves. That’s because interest in the contents of secreted documents grows for every day they are withheld.

The Bush administration should simply tell people what it knows, explain what it doesn’t know and be clear about what--if anything--it is going to do to find out what it doesn’t know. This rule, steadfastly applied, will prevent the release of information that turns out to be half-baked.

The pressure of the news cycle has forced the administration to release information about its Enron contacts in an ad hoc manner. It is better to absorb a pounding through as many news cycles as it takes to assemble the facts fully and accurately and then release them all at once. Another benefit of such a disclosure is that with so many details released simultaneously, some are bound to get more attention than others.

By far the greatest danger for Bush is that Enron will become shorthand for the rich getting special treatment while working families get shafted. There is only one way for him to prevent this: Convince people that he is truly appalled by what happened at Enron, that he is taking meaningful steps to help those who were hurt and that he and his administration will do whatever is necessary to keep this from happening again.

It’s not enough for the president to reveal that his mother-in-law lost a few thousand dollars. His recent pension reform proposals are a start, if he can get them past his financial supporters who will oppose many of the necessary campaign finance, corporate law and accounting changes.

This is a critical time for Bush. As he fights a dangerous war abroad, he and his aides must chart a counterintuitive strategy for this domestic crisis. How disciplined Bush and his aides are in following their plan will determine whether Enron is a story that really matters after all.