Pillars of Our Society
The Hidden Columnists--Frank Rich Edition (16 Jan 06)

In which Mr. Rich asks the question, Is Abramoff the New Monica? (full column available to Times Select subscribers). But rather on focus on the impeachment angle that the title/headline would suggest, Frank instead pulls together the twin pillars of greed upon which the BushCo administration is precariously perched--Enron from the first term, and now Abramoff and his money-sucking cronies.

Washington's jaded conventional wisdom ... says that Mr. Abramoff's bribing of congressmen to do his clients' bidding is the same old generic Capitol Hill scandal dating to Grant and Harding, differing only in the sheer scale of the numbers (of politicians implicated, of moolah changing hands). The many conservative pundits now deploring Tom DeLay take a similarly reductive line. "Washington power can corrupt absolutely," explained the Wall Street Journal editorial page while bemoaning that "people like Mr. Abramoff" came "to Washington to clean up Washington" and then were corrupted by the capital's evil ways. The DeLay Republicans, you see, are merely repeating the history of the decadent, power-fattened Democrats who preceded them, most especially Jim Wright, the speaker of the House who resigned in 1989.

If it's all Washington's fault, of course, it's not the G.O.P.'s fault; the scandal can be quarantined to a few (or a dozen) bad apples who were seduced by a lobbyist's skyboxes and not-so-petty Indian casino cash. But that theory of the case conveniently denies the quarter-century-old provenance of Mr. Abramoff. This scandal's particular greedy, power-crazed ethos wasn't created by Washington - it was imported to Washington by him and two pals destined to rise to the top of the G.O.P. establishment, Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist. These ruthless three musketeers first converged in the College Republicans hierarchy in the early 1980's, long before they obtained the Washington power that could corrupt them (and years before the Wright scandal).

They preached a take-no-prisoners strategy and a specific ideology - do away with taxes, privatize government, free business from any regulation - that changed Washington far more than Washington changed them. Their triumph can be found everywhere today, from Halliburton's no-bid contracts in Iraq to the K Street project, a Norquist-championed and DeLay-sanctioned operation to intimidate corporations with business before Congress into hiring exclusively Republican lobbyists like Mr. Abramoff.

But it's not only the genealogy of the Abramoff scandal that separates it from its predecessors. So does the distinctive odor of its possible criminality. In its financial shenanigans and some of its personnel, the Abramoff affair doesn't so much echo Teapot Dome as the business scandal that engulfed Mr. Bush's former No. 1 corporate patron, Enron, in our new century. The Abramoff scandal's pious trappings are sui generis as well. They adhere to the Karl Rove playbook that wraps every hardball White House tactic in godliness and exploits "faith based" organizations as political machines to deliver the G.O.P.'s religious right base.

[...]

Mr. Abramoff himself served on the Interior Department's transition team after the 2000 election. Perhaps it's this steady drip of revelations, including those about his White House access as a "Pioneer" delivering at least $100,000 to the Bush campaign, that has frightened the administration into suddenly speaking out about the scandal. Scott McClellan is now also using that helpful verb recall - as in the president does not "recall" ever meeting Mr. Abramoff (an artful dodge if photos surface). Mr. Bush has disingenuously explained that the lobbyist had been an "equal money dispenser" to those "in both political parties." (To both, yes, but never equally.)

If this all sounds a little familiar, that's because it replays the White House game plan after the Enron meltdown. Mr. Bush then suggested that he had inherited his relationship with Ken Lay from Ann Richards, his Democratic predecessor as Texas governor, and suddenly took to referring to the backer he had once nicknamed Kenny Boy as Mr. Lay. You'd never guess that Enron brass had helped pay Mr. Bush's campaign expenses for the Florida recount, contributed $300,000 to the inaugural gala and attended four meetings of Dick Cheney's secret energy task force.

As fate would have it, the court appearances of Mr. Lay, Mr. DeLay, Jeff Skilling, Mr. Safavian and Mr. Abramoff could all overlap on 24/7 cable in the months ahead. There will surely be much talk of God along the way. Mr. DeLay's pastor, Mr. Buckham, and Mr. Reed were not the only prayerful players in the Abramoff casino. So were the Rev. "Lucky Louie" Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition and the right-wing Rabbi Daniel Lapin, whose Toward Tradition organization received a $25,000 check (in all innocence, we're told) from the Abramoff client eLottery. In 2002, the good rabbi welcomed the lobbyist onto the board of his American Alliance of Jews and Christians, along with Jerry Falwell and the man who loves Israel literally to death, Pat Robertson.