The Company Presidency; Enron and the Bush family have boosted each other up the ladder of success. But have their ties created a Teapot Dome?

The Company Presidency; Enron and the Bush family have boosted each other up the ladder of success. But have their ties created a Teapot Dome? From: The Los Angeles Times; Los Angeles, Calif.; Feb 10, 2002; KEVIN PHILLIPS

Abstract: In retrospect, it's unclear whether the [George W. Bush] dynasty built Enron or vice versa. In 1985, when Enron was formed, the Bushes were an important political family. George Bush, as vice president, headed the Reagan administration's task force on energy policy. But in terms of Texas oil money and stature, the Bushes were third echelon. When George W. ran for governor of Texas in 1994, Ann Richards, the Democratic incumbent, joked that of the oil companies he had started or been involved with, none had made a profit. Enron's rise, with the Bush family's help, in the 1990s rearranged the energy power structure in Texas and the nation, and put the Bush entourage in clover. The question now is whether what went up together will come down together. From 1988 to 1992, Bush the elder collected hefty political contributions from Enron. When president, it was his ambassador in Buenos Aires who had pushed for favorable tax treatment for Enron in Argentina. Bush asked Enron chief Kenneth L. Lay to co-chair a host committee for the July 1990 G-7 economic summit in Houston and appointed him to his Export Council in late 1990. A year earlier, Bush energy officials began work on the 1992 Energy Policy Act. Its provisions obliged utility companies to carry and transmit Enron- generated electricity, which contributed to the company's subsequent huge growth. In 1992, Lay was named co-chairman of the Bush reelection campaign and chairman of the host committee of the Republican National Convention in Houston. Enron boosters who landed government jobs are Patrick H. Wood III, the former Texas Public Utilities Commission chairman who now heads the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), and Nora M. Brownell, a former pro-Enron public-utilities commissioner in deregulated Pennsylvania, who is also a FERC member. White House personnel chief Clay Johnson, a former energy lawyer in Houston; Army Secretary Thomas E. White, a former Enron senior executive; Commerce Department general counsel Ted Kassinger, a former Enron advisor and trade lawyer with Vinson & Elkins; Montana ex-Gov. Marc Racicot, the former Enron lobbyist recently named Republican National Committee chairman by Bush.