Turning Boardroom Baddies Into Votes
In her latest Political Points commentary, CBS News Senior Political Editor Dotty Lynch examines the Democrats' bid to turn corporate scandal into political gold at the expense of the White House and the GOP.
Maybe Andy Card had it right. In a surprisingly unguarded moment during an interview with Esquire last month, he bemoaned the departure of Karen Hughes from the White House and said, "She's leaving when the president has one of the highest approval ratings on record. From here, it can only go down. And when it does, you know who they are going to blame? Andy Card."
Well, Karen's last day was Monday, and since she left the stock market has plummeted, the president gave a press conference in Washington and a speech on Wall Street which were roundly panned. And Mr. Bush's attempts to change the subject back to Homeland Security and prescription drugs went nowhere.
Instead, his Harken Energy stock dealings in 1991 and a Cheney video touting the Arthur Anderson accounting firm back in 1996 dominated the news.
The piling on was unbelievable. John McCain, always happy to stick it to Mr. Bush, spent the better part of the week calling for the resignation of SEC Chair Harvey Pitt. On Thursday, he gave a much publicized speech to the National Press Club quoting his hero Teddy Roosevelt and calling for prison for corporate executives who misstate the finances of their companies.
But it was the Democrats who were really having a field day. For months they've been crying that they couldn't get traction against Mr. Bush and the Republicans because of the war against terrorism.
For a while the Enron debacle looked like it mike "have legs" but that story faded from public consciousness. Then they thought they had a silver bullet in the prescription drug benefit for seniors.
But unlike the Republican Party of the '90s, which turned a blind eye to the health care issues, the GOP of 2002 saw that they had to play on this issue. They came up with a bill of their own, rammed it through the House of Representatives and got their pals in the pharmaceutical industry to mount a $6 million dollar ad campaign for GOP congressmen who voted for the bill.
The dam finally broke on June 25 when WorldCom disclosed a $4 billion accounting fraud which had put it on the verge of bankruptcy. Members of Congress, home for the fourth of July recess, heard the anger in the voices of their constituents over corporate excess and fraudulent booking keeping and their distress over the impact on their retirement money.
Democratic leaders rushed back to Washington and held a press conference with former Enron and WorldCom workers who have lost their pensions. They believe that they can link this issue to voter concerns about Social Security and Republican proposals allow people to invest more of their retirement money in the stock market.
Two new Democratic Web sites kicked into gear chronicling corporate abuses and Republican ties to them. And a 30-second video comparing the Bush administration to the foxes guarding the hen-house was unveiled in the Washington and New York markets (mainly, one suspects, in the newsrooms of the media organizations who reside there) by the liberal group American Family Voices. The ad was produced by the Glover Park Group. Glover Park is the top media strategists of the Clinton-Gore years, Joe Lockhart and Carter Eskew.
The Democrats are working the Bush/Cheney connection because up to now, while voters are furious about corporate irresponsibility, they are not blaming George Bush.
A CBS News poll this week showed that by 59-34 percent, American trust Mr. Bush to regulate business and that 58 percent believe members of his administration are honest.
Republican National Committee Chair Marc Racicot told CBS News that he didn't think this issue would hurt Republicans because voters were blaming corporations and not politicians for the problem.
Other Republicans saw an opening to turn the issue back on the Democrats and bring back their favorite whipping boy, Bill Clinton. Republican Rep. Tom Davis, chair of the National Republican Campaign Committee, sent a strategy memo to Republican candidates saying that the corporate corruptions "were shaped by a culture of dishonesty and situational ethics that flowed directly from the White House."
And Republicans even tried to turn it on Linda Daschle claiming that the big bucks she makes as a lobbyist for the airlines show her husband's [Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle] ties to big business.
The always-wise Washington Post reporter and columnist David Broder says that Mr. Bush's woes are predictable. Rather than invoking the Karen Hughes explanation, Broder wrote this week that bad things always happen to presidents just before their first midterm election and that this year is no different. But don't tell that to Andy Card. I bet he's still blaming the ghost of Karen past.