What if scandal-hunting over Bush administration ties to Enron Corp. turns up nothing more than a couple of phone calls and refusal to help an unraveling energy trader notoriously generous with political money?
The question should frighten Democrats. Their election-year craving for some smear on the record of a popular Republican president is palpable. If the current inquisition discloses nothing more than that cabinet officials answer their telephones, the party that excused the serial indiscretions of former President Bill Clinton will look, at best, silly.
There are companies with more promise than Enron offers for campaign-finance intrigue. Some companies get what they pay for.
Political investment
Archer Daniels Midland Co., for example, makes Enron look like an amateur where return on political investment is concerned. ADM is the Decatur, Ill., agribusiness giant that has caused ethanol produced from US grain to be required in gasoline. It doesn't outspend Enron; it just gets much more of what it wants from politicians.
According to the Center for Responsive Government, Enron and its affiliates made "soft money" donations totaling $1.67 million in the 2000 election cycle and in the 2002 cycle has so far contributed $305,000. Soft money, which goes to political parties and affiliated groups rather than individual candidates, is the main channel for corporate giving at the national level. ADM's soft-money contributions amounted to $660,000 in the 2000 election cycle and $270,000 so far in the 2002 cycle.
Enron for years has had a clear political goal: deregulation of the electricity market. The position is natural for an innovative trader with experience in the deregulation of natural gas. Toward this goal, Enron had only limited success. The federal government during the 1990s restructured parts of the electricity market under its jurisdiction to accommodate deregulation. But it left a crucial step, supplier choice at the retail level, to state governments. Only about half the states have restructured their electricity markets. Not all of those initiatives represent true deregulation. The energy policy proposed by the Bush administration last year included no special push toward nationwide deregulation.
And when Enron ran feelers through the administration looking for help as its finances collapsed, the big Bush-campaign contributor apparently got nothing. There have been rumblings about Enron influence in energy appointments. In comparison with ADM's trophies, however, that's peanuts.
ADM, a heavy political contributor for more than 30 years, has synthesized whole businesses out of the rich alchemy of politics and money. When weak sugar prices threatened its sugar-substitute business, ADM won price supports for sugar. And it has long championed the tax credits, tariffs, and mandates essential to a market that wouldn't otherwise exist for ethanol in gasoline.
It's no secret that fuel ethanol is political booty for corn growers and distillers-among which ADM is by far the biggest-and unwarranted cost to taxpayers and motorists. In 1992, retired ADM Chairman Dwayne Andreas made his case for fuel ethanol to a Business Week writer this way: "This is the Midwest vs. the Middle East. It's corn farmers vs. the oil companies."
That quote appears in a 1995 Cato Institute report by James Bovard alleging that consumers paid $30 for every dollar of profit ADM earned on ethanol and $10 for every dollar of ADM profit on corn sweeteners. Noting that Andreas family members and ADM during 1979-95 had made federal political contributions exceeding $4 million, the author estimated that 43% of ADM's profits came from products heavily subsidized or protected by the federal government.
Market grows
The fuel ethanol folly is no closer to going away now than it was when the Cato study appeared. In farm states, no one goes far in politics without paying regular obeisance to ethanol subsidies and demanding more. So the market grows, thanks recently to phaseouts of competitive fuel additives and mandates for renewable substitutes. Officials from both parties are complicit, including Bush. ADM's contributions go to both major political parties, usually favoring Republicans.
Enron, leader though it was in innovation of trading practice, never came close to ADM's achievements in the arbitrage of governance and money. Yet Enron's the object of a campaign-fund witch-hunt, and ADM is not. Did someone say scandal?
