Where Was George?

Will George W. Bush turn out to be 2002's version of Ivan Boesky? The thought has obviously occurred to Bush's critics, who are asking all sorts of questions about a decade-old stock transaction that has the whiff of insider trading. And it has obviously occurred to Bush's staff in the White House, who are furiously, and a bit desperately, trying to show their boss did nothing illegal.

At issue is Bush's conduct during 1990, when he served on the board of the Harken Energy Corporation. Bush sold about $850,000 in Harken stock just two months before the company, under orders from the SEC, announced that it was restating its balance sheet, revealing a $23 million loss. Bush did disclose the sale to the SEC, as the law requires. However, he did so some eight months later, well past the legal deadline. Selling shares in a company based on exclusive knowledge about the company's finances is the very definition of insider trading--the crime that sent Boesky and a host of other Wall Street crooks to jail in the 1980s. The SEC subsequently investigated Bush for his actions. And while the SEC didn't prosecute, the fact that Bush had pretty good connections at the time (his father was president) certainly raises the question of whether special treatment, not a lack of evidence, is what saved George W. from punishment.

Last week, when a Paul Krugman column in The New York Times prompted reporters to ask questions about the transaction, Bush tried to dismiss the whole notion--perhaps hoping that, as in the presidential campaign, stories about his character would die on their own. The Harken sale had "been fully vetted," Bush scolded the press. When the media, encouraged by Democrats, persisted with the line of questioning anyway, Bush's advisers started groping for new explanations. Communications Director Dan Bartlett deployed the everyone-does-it defense: "These types of late filings are not out of the ordinary," he said. "It would be like doing a 60 [mph] in a 55." Press Secretary Ari Fleischer blamed Harken's lawyers for the negligent paperwork, thereby contradicting Bush's own prior explanation that the SEC itself was to blame. As always, the administration called the charges politically motivated.