Enron puts Bush in familiar Political Trap. (Commentary).

EVERY time I read a story about the political end of the Enron scandal, I have to stop and figure out why I should be outraged.

The approach in the newspapers - echoed by the quotes coming off Capitol Hill - is to suggest that any public figure who has had the slightest dealings with Enron Corp. is tainted by scandal. But from everything we know so far, the political people who dealt with the bankrupt energy trader behaved admirably. This may be due more to an awareness among Enron's friends in Washington that they couldn't get away with helping Enron than to the integrity of political people. Either way, it's reassuring.

There's nothing inherently scandalous or even surprising, for instance, in U.S. Treasury official Peter Fisher answering phone calls from people who want special favors for Enron. (What is surprising is that one of those people was former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin.)

Just the reverse. It's useful for the undersecretary for domestic finance to learn anything he can find out about the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history. And to find out things, he'll occasionally need to talk to people who want him to do something he shouldn't do.

By the ugly rules

For that matter, there's nothing illegal about the special access Enron and its chief executive, Kenneth Lay, bought to Vice President Dick Cheney with their campaign contributions. It's not a pretty sight. The rules of the game in national politics are offensive. But the Bush people appear to have played within them.

Oddly enough, Enron and its executives would be much better off if they had never contributed a dime to a political campaign, or a corporate jet to a candidate. Because they gave so much to the people who might otherwise intervene on their behalf, those people can do nothing for them without seeming to be on the take.

That's the price you pay when you dole out hundreds of thousands of dollars to gain access to politicians. If you land in serious trouble, those very same politicians have no power to prevent their political enemies from having their way with you.

If Enron's executives are subjected to a particularly gruesome public lynching, it will be because of, not despite, their connections to the Bush White House.

From the moment the Wall Street Journal exposed Enron's bogus accounting, it's unlikely Bush or his friends did anything to help the company. What's interesting is what happened before Enron's misdeeds were exposed -- and before either Enron, Kenneth Lay or George W. Bush thought anyone was watching their dealings very closely.

If I were an investigative journalist looking for my Pulitzer Prize, I'd ignore the sideshow in Washington, buy a ticket to Houston, and dig into the relationship between Enron and former Governor Bush.

Anyone who does this will have a new kind of license to cause trouble - granted by the Republican attack machine. After the Clinton years, no one can argue with a straight face that there is a statute of limitations on financial peccadilloes. If Clinton's Whitewater investment was a legitimate object of public inquiry, the details of Bush's financial life in Texas must also be considered fair game.

Even if the researchers turn up nothing, the scandal already tells us something about our president. As he rose to power, he didn't have a better idea than Clinton on how to evaluate the integrity of the business people who wanted to be his friend.

You might think that big shot Republicans would be shrewder in their business dealings than big shot Democrats. You'd think they'd know that businessmen who cozy up to politicians should be watched more closely than the others. Apparently, not.

In a stroke, Enron has reminded everyone that the man in the White House bought his position - with money that, increasingly, smells.

Michael Lewis, whose books include "Next: The Future Just Happened" and "Liar's Poker," is a columnist with Bloomberg News.