Where there’s smoke

The Teapot Dome scandal forever tainted the reputation of President Warren G. Harding. The scandal involved the leasing, without competitive bidding, of oil fields in Wyoming and California and payoffs to Interior Secretary Albert Fall, who ended up going to jail.

Now Teapot Dome is being compared to Enron. Kevin Phillips, writing in the Los Angeles Times, describes how in both cases powerful energy interests enriched powerful politicians. In the case of Enron, the rise of George W. Bush as a politician in Texas and the rise of Enron happened to coincide.

Phillips writes that in 1988 George W. Bush actually served as a lobbyist for Enron, telephoning the Argentine government to promote an Enron pipeline proposal. Bush’s staff has denied that Bush made that phone call, but an Argentine cabinet minister says he did. In any event, Bush’s father was president-elect when Bush made the alleged phone call, a fact that could not have been lost on the Argentine government.