David A. Keene

Kenny boy’s millions didn’t buy him much
February 6, 2002

Life just isn’t fair. This undeniable fact has been brought home to me once again by the collapse of Enron, a company for which I have never done anything and which has never paid me a penny. This is what I find so unfair. After all, it seems that Enron CEO Ken Lay and his henchmen were paying a lot of other folks who never did much of anything for Enron either. In fact, several journalistic and activist recipients of Enron’s largesse have told reporters that they don’t really know why they got any money from the one-time energy giant.

At least the politicians who took Enron’s money knew what he wanted. Enron’s lobbyists made sure of that. Enron was peculiarly dependent on Washington’s policies and, as a result, Lay wanted to be considered a friend by presidents and members of Congress, regardless of party or ideological inclination.

What he discovered, of course, is that friendship purchased with a check isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Politicians are great at taking such checks. They’ll even meet with the check writers, but when it comes to delivering, they tend to give far more weight to other factors — like party, ideology and their own personal political interests. In some cases they even put the interests of the nation and their constituents ahead of the desires of such people.

The Enron bankruptcy and Lay’s attempt to use the corporation’s money to get two administrations and Congress to do his bidding is being used today as an argument for radical campaign finance reform. What those who point to Enron fail to note is that the company is bankrupt today in part because the millions Lay and his friends “invested” in Washington didn’t buy them the government policies they sought.

Back in the early ’70s I worked for then-Sen. Jim Buckley (R) of New York. Jim is an intelligent and decent man who became, shortly after I joined his staff, the first conservative senator to call on President Nixon to resign.

Just before the press conference where he made his feelings about Nixon public, he asked me if there was anyone else he should call. He had already talked to his family, friends and a few colleagues, but I suggested that he owed a call to a fellow who was a close friend of Nixon’s and who had, perhaps at Nixon’s request, been the biggest contributor to Jim’s Senate campaign.

Jim agreed, made the call and told the man what he was about to do. There was a long silence and then the fellow told Jim in graphic detail what he could do to himself and hung up. I thought at the time that more often than not, that was all most contributors ever really get for their money; the right to let some politician know exactly what they think of him as he goes merrily on his way.

And, that’s just about what Lay got for his millions. He needed two things from the federal government and got neither, though the Clinton administration tried to deliver on both.

The first was electric utility deregulation. Lay thought that, if he could get the feds to force a deregulatory scheme through on a nationwide basis, Enron could grab this huge new market for itself. The profits would have been enormous, but Congress balked in spite of his contributions and the lukewarm support he got from Bill Clinton.

The second thing he wanted was the Kyoto protocol on global warming. This, too, would have meant billions to Enron. The Clinton administration really did try to deliver on this one, but failed.

Then along came George W. Bush and what Lay no doubt saw as a second chance. He knew the Bushes from Texas and emerged as perhaps the Republican nominee’s biggest financial supporter. When Bush won, Lay decided that he wanted even more. He still wanted the policies that would make him wealthier, of course, but he also apparently wanted to be named to the Bush Cabinet.

He didn’t get a Cabinet post. And he didn’t get an ambassadorial appointment. What’s more, the new president quickly quashed the Kyoto treaty, and an energy task force headed by his vice president listened politely to Lay and his lobbyists before adopting policies that gave him very, very little.

So what did Lay get for his millions? He got a bunch of meetings with Clinton and Bush officials and some ineffectual help from the Clinton White House, but little more. The new markets that were going to increase the value of his stock portfolio and the power of Enron remained closed to him and before he knew it his dream ended in the largest corporate bankruptcy in our history.

Oh, he did get something. After spending millions, he got a president with sense enough to keep his distance on policy and quit calling him “Ken-boy.”