I told you! I TOLD You!

Oh, lemme gloat a little bit…I wrote here:

The Enron verdict is guilty. It will be spun as a disaster for the Bushies, and no mention will be made of Clinton bringing Enron folk to India with him while in office or of his playing golf with Kenny Boy. What’s new?

Well, Howard Fineman did the honors and in a very sloppy manner, as we read from Stephen Spruiell:

This is one of the most astonishing opinion pieces I’ve ever read. The title is “How Enron Tarnishes the Bush Era.” I read it expecting (hoping?) to at least see some evidence and argument supporting the title. Fineman starts out well with caveats about how President Bush was not close to Enron’s executives; how the Bush administration didn’t bail out Enron before it collapsed, and how Enron started cooking the books during the “go-go Clinton years.” Caveats out of the way, what do we get as evidence supporting the piece’s title? The following:

As Texas governor from 1995 to 2000, Bush and consiglieri Karl Rove cultivated the Enronites for their vast connections and money; more than that, Bush linked arms with Lay in the belief that market forces alone should guide the production, distribution and use of energy. But the theory ran riot at Enron, giving license to corporate buccaneers who blithely screwed consumers, employees and shareholders alike.

That’s all we get supporting Fineman’s viewpoint: cultivating relationships with a major corporation in the state you govern and supporting a free-market approach to energy policy makes you part and parcel of the corruption at Enron.
[…]
I eagerly await Fineman’s next piece on how Enron’s lobbying for the regulation of carbon-dioxide emissions (Enron wanted to make a market for trading carbon dioxide emission permits) tarnishes Al Gore’s efforts to combat global warming.

Read the rest from Spruiell.

I don’t think Howard Fineman has ever gotten over Don Imus remarking that he seemed like a Bush fan.