The Smartest Guys in the Room

Taking a break from sailing, I watched the Enron movie this morning - for anybody who hasn't seen it yet, i definitely recommend it.

Without devolving into old-style political ranting, i didn't know exactly how closely tied in Enron/Ken Lay were with the current administration. The movie creates a pretty clear line that goes from:

Ken Lay's pocket - Enron was the single largest corporate donor, to
george bush's election (such as it was an election), to
the rise of the deregulation crowd (the federal energy reg cmte was run by one of Lay's cronies), to
the rolling CA blackouts (the trader tapes in the film are pretty incriminating), to
the CA recall/Governator election (key reason for davis's unpopularity), to
w's second election (davis would have been a very strong candidate), to
the downfall of enron (bush administration explicitly and implicitly helped enron build its house of cards)...and so on

The idea of Enron as a house of cards is itself a pretty good metaphor for the administration. All of the same elements are there - the nuremberg defense, silencing of critics, removal of any dissent, lack of recognition of reality, hubris, belief that they were changing the world, crony-ism, laziness of those who should have provided checks and balances in the system. When will the other shoe truly fall on the administration? This us attorney scandal has all the characteristics of nixon's saturday night massacre, and i don't think abu gonzales's teflon can protect him. but i've also said that before...