Opinion
-
News Analysis
Enron energy for Democrats
|
The Democrats are hoping that Enron will provide them the ammunition to take on the Bush White House, says SRIDHAR KRISHNASWAMI.
|
THERE WAS a time, not too long ago, when Republicans and Democrats, the latter especially, were bending over backwards, if not tripping over one another, to give all that the U.S. President, George W. Bush, was asking for. That was immediately after September 11, when the whole nation rallied behind their leader and his response to Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and Osama bin Laden.
Now some four months later, the Democrats are looking for an opening to target Mr. Bush and are cautiously confident of finding one. With the President still in command of foreign policy and having a 82 per cent approval rating, the Democrats are focussing for the most part on domestic policy. They have to up the ante for the simple reason that the Congressional elections of 2002 are not very far away.
If September 11 had not happened, the Democrats may have found themselves in a politically different situation. Having wrested control of the Senate — thanks to a defection — the Democrats were seriously hoping not only to increase their numbers but also take a good shot at wresting control of the House of Representatives. And that would have set the stage for 2004.
Now, their only way out is to challenge this Republican administration on domestic priorities. The Democrats played it politically right by not opposing what Mr. Bush was asking for in the immediate aftermath of September 11, whether it had to do with additional resources for fighting terror, bailing out the airline industry or fine-tuning the anti-terrorism laws in spite of protests from civil rights groups and activists. Now, the Democrats are hoping that the bankruptcy of the Enron Corporation will provide them the ammunition to take on the Bush White House.
The Republicans, in one sense, are in a bind and many are reluctantly coming to realise that what goes around, comes around. It was not that far back in the past that the Republicans and the right wing were trashing the former First Lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton's health care proposals. Or for that matter looking at the Whitewater "scandal" — a failed real estate deal — as something that could finish off the Clinton administration.
But Whitewater looks like a Saturday school picnic compared to the goings-on in Enron — with the "shreddings" at Arthur Andersen thrown in! While the Houston-based energy giant dished out contributions to both Republicans and Democrats, there is no question that the chief benefactor was the Grand Old Party and the man sitting in the Oval Office.
Enron did not just fold and file for bankruptcy but left hundreds of its employees on the streets, forcing them to hold on to worthless stocks until the very end. Naturally, the Democrats want to know how much, and when, the White House knew about the goings-on. That apart, the investigative arm of Congress, the General Accounting Office, wants details on the meetings of the Energy Task Force which was headed by the Vice-President, Richard Cheney.
Among other things, the GAO wants to know what kind of inputs the Energy Task Force had and from whom. There is the India angle as well given the controversy over the project in Maharastra. But the White House has adamantly maintained that all conversations with the President and the Vice-President cannot become public record.
On a broad level, not many are yet challenging the Campaign against Terrorism. But small rumblings have indeed surfaced — even within the administration — on both the current campaign and the next steps. For instance, some have argued that chasing the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in the caves, mountains and boondocks of Afghanistan is one thing, but expanding this to some kind of a formal war against Iraq is a totally different matter and one that is fraught with dangers.
The Republican administration and the Democrats seem to have drawn the first battle lines. For the Republicans, it is a question of maintaining sufficient momentum on the "war against terror" even as it advances the domestic agenda, or the stimulus package to get the country out of the recession.
And the Democrats are hedging their bets by focussing on the domestic policies while not giving the impression of breaking with the President in his campaign against terrorism. With a public opinion poll giving a 60-point spread in favour of the President in the realm of conducting foreign policy, the Democrats are hoping to steer the debate closer to issues dear to them — social security, health care, education and tax cuts. Worried that the country has returned to deficits, the Democrats are cautiously calling for postponement of some tax breaks that have been agreed upon. But Mr. Bush maintains that the country is still in a recession and hence is looking for more tax breaks to businesses with a view to bringing about more jobs. The Democrats are wary of the President's stimulus package, to say the least.
The Republican administration has also come to see the slow but shifting priorities of the American public. On the eve of his first State of the Union Address, Mr. Bush realised that the American people wanted to hear more about the economy and less about the "war on terrorism".
He is savvy enough to know that despite a very high score on foreign policy, it was the economy that nailed his father in 1992. And, he does not want history to repeat itself either for his party in November 2002 or down the line during the Presidential election of 2004.
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Opinion
|
