The View From Europe
Money Changes Everything
By Nicola Mitchell

June 13, 2002 - LONDON (APJP) -- When I sat down to write this piece just over a week ago, I intended to concentrate on the same topic that had been preoccupying much of the UK press of late: that of an unstable and crumbling Bush Administration.

But oh what a difference a week makes, especially in politics, as now the British press are of course musing over an administration in trouble -- but they have more than internal squabbles and power struggles to talk about.

The financial scandals slowly engulfing the White House have been playing out in the UK press like a scene from a Hollywood movie, with twists and turns at every juncture. From the initial WorldCom eruptions to the latest news that the public interest group Judicial Watch has slapped Cheney with a lawsuit, Hollywood couldn't write a better script even if they tried.

During the 2000 campaign, Bush managed to sweep questions about his dubious financial past under the carpet on a daily basis, but its not so easy when you hold the most famous job in the world, especially when the people that helped to put you there are the ones currently standing in the dock.

One of the main criticisms levelled at Bush by the British media is that after the Enron debacle; Bush talked a tough fight, but he never really got around to doing anything about it. But now all that has changed.

The recent financial scandals have forced him to act, and therein lays the major problem: this is a president who was elected to oppose tougher constraints and restrictions on big business, not to implement them.

In his attempt to counteract the scandals swamping his presidency, Bush has proposed tougher criminal penalties for those executives found to be misleading investors. His words are in stark contrast to the beliefs and actions that built and shaped his political career and eventually led him to the White House.

Even now, in the centre of one of the biggest financial scandals Washington has seen, the administration is still opposing a bill from Senator Paul Sarbanes aimed at tightening auditing standards and reducing conflicts of interest in the accountancy industry and among Wall Street research analysts, hardly the actions of a government who claims to be championing 'corporate responsibility.'

The administration has constantly laughed at suggestions that they are too cosy with big business, but here you have a president who was once investigated by the SEC, a vice president with the threat of a financial lawsuit hanging over him, and an attorney general who only just managed to escape from the Enron saga unscathed. Couple that with a long line of donors and friends, many of whom have been involved in some way shape or form with either Enron, WorldCom, Harken Energy, Halliburton or whatever other company is next to fall - does that sound like a team unfamiliar with the corporate boardrooms of the US?

With the midterms looming in November, Bush can no longer just hide behind his "war leader" approval ratings. The feeling in the UK is that if he doesn't act this time around, the public will notice, and he'll find himself in a bit of a pickle come the November elections.

Furthermore, in the view of some quarters of the UK press, Bush is not only appearing as a leader at the head of an ailing administration, but also a leader with "no bottle."

Even the right wing papers are running out of excuses for him, and the "blame it all on Clinton" line has begun to wear a bit thin. Sure, some of the financial messes oozing out of corporate America can be blamed on the slowing down of the Clinton economic boom years, but Bush and his administration have made their own corporate beds, and now they are just going to have to lie in them.