Derek Cressman directs TheRestofUs.org, a nonpartisan watchdog of the role of big money in politics .
I suppose it comes as no surprise that in his State of the Union address, George W. Bush somehow managed to avoid talking about the two biggest scandals rocking the union: Enron's fraud and Jack Abramoff's greed. Both came to a crescendo the same week as his speech, and both involve men who have been important to George W. Bush the politician.
Enron CEO Ken Lay's case went to court last week in what CNN is calling the "corporate trial of the century." Last Thursday, House Republicans chose a new majority leader to replace Tom DeLay. DeLay, of course, was forced from his leadership post due to his indictment for violating Texas campaign finance laws and his association with lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Could the president's omission of the word “corruption” from his address have anything to do with his special relationship to Ken Lay and Jack Abramoff? Both helped propel George W. Bush to the White House by raising extremely large sums of money for him.
Many forget that Bush became the first major party nominee to reject the voluntary spending limits of the presidential public financing system and rely upon private donors to fund his campaign during the primaries. Bush took campaign fundraising to a whole new level by creating the Pioneers—fundraisers who were each responsible for bundling at least $100,000 in amounts of $1,000 or less.
While most of these Pioneers are no doubt ethical people, a disturbing number of them are proving otherwise.
According to federal prosecutors, Ken Lay told outright lies about Enron's financial health to his employees and investors. Yet this pillar of integrity was invited to join Vice President Cheney's secret energy task force, where he promoted Enron's interests. Meanwhile, his company was manipulating California's energy markets, artificially engineering a power shortage to drive up prices and thus drum up political support for Cheney's agenda of more oil and coal extraction in places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Jack Abramoff, the black-hatted Pioneer most frequently in the news lately, has pleaded guilty to, among other things, bribing a member of Congress. The White House is now scrambling to prevent photos of Abramoff and Bush from being circulated, while the president is claiming he can't recall meeting the man. The administration is also stonewalling inquiries about whether Abramoff met with Karl Rove in the White House.
Thomas Noe, a rare-coin dealer from Ohio, is under federal indictment on charges that, as part of his successful effort to reach Pioneer status, he illegally reimbursed people for making contributions to Bush's campaign. Ohio Gov. Bob Taft pleaded no contest last spring to failing to report gifts from Noe. Taft entrusted Noe with some $50 million in investments for the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation, from which some $12 million is now missing.
Brent Wilkes, a defense contractor from southern California, has been named by ex-congressman Duke Cunningham as one of the men who bribed him to the tune of at least $700,000. Wilkes, not only a Pioneer, but also a southern California chair of Bush's fundraising committee, has a history of bundling contributions from his employees, family and associates; this suggests that he, too, may have been involved in making contributions to Bush in the name of other people, circumventing federal campaign finance law.
The president's Northeast Chairman for his 2004 campaign, also a Pioneer, was James Tobin. Tobin was recently convicted of illegally tampering with the Democratic Party's phone lines on Election Day to prevent them from contacting potential voters.
President Bush has failed to sufficiently denounce these supporters or distance himself from their activities. While Bush's re-election campaign has given away the contributions it received directly from Jack Abramoff, it has not dispersed money that Abramoff bundled as a Pioneer, nor returned contributions raised by these other ethically questionable Pioneers. The Bush campaign has also steadfastly refused to reveal which contributions were made by which Pioneers, making it impossible to investigate whether any Pioneers besides Noe were engaged in illegal money laundering.
If the president truly wants to give the nation hope, he shouldn't dodge the bad news about the corrupt state of our union. Rather, it is his responsibility to go beyond earmark reform and mount an effort to both root out corruption and tighten the rules on lobbying and campaign contributions—with the aim of preventing future scandals.
