WATCHING all the self-contradicting Enron chatter over the weekend reminded me of the quintessential Ronald Reagan anecdote. You remember–the one about the optimistic kid, shoveling manure with a smile on his face. After all, the kid reasoned, “there’s got to be a pony in here somewhere.”
That’s pretty much the attitude of Henry Waxman, Joe Lieberman, and the other Democrats most enamored of the Enron scandal. Either Enron had undue influence over a corporatist Bush administration selling its energy policy to the highest bidder (Waxman’s pony). Or Enron had too little influence over a Dickensian Bush administration that failed in its duty to bail out the company and its “average shareholders who lost their life savings” (Lieberman’s pony). Either way, there’s an animal here for the Democrats to ride.
