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American Morning

Several Political Stories Overshadowed by September 11th Attacks

Aired December 28, 2001 - 07:40   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Several political stories were overshadowed by the September 11th attacks, to say the least. Two of those being the fallout from the collapse of energy broker Enron and President Bush abandoning the Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty after many years.

Joining me to give those topics a little bit of attention is Ron Brownstein. Ron is a political columnist for "The Los Angeles Times". His "Washington Outlook" column appears every Monday and that's where he is this morning in Washington. Good to see you Ron.

RON BROWNSTEIN, LOS ANGELES TIMES: Good morning again Miles.

O'BRIEN: All right, this is a little bit in the take your medicine category of news - ABM and Enron, but the fact of the matter is if you're an Enron employee, this is near and dear to your heart. There's a lot of people who really quite literally were wiped out of their retirements.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

O'BRIEN: And I guess what makes this a very interesting political story is the ties between the Enron leadership and the White House.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes, in ordinary times, in which these are assuredly not, this would be the scandal story of Washington or at least the search for a scandal story that would be dominating Washington this fall. Enron, as you suggested, went through a spectacular bankruptcy that is leaving a lot of retirees and investors holding worthless stock. There are a lot of people who are being directly and very forcibly hurt by what's happened here.

And this is a company whose ties to both parties, but especially both the Republican Party and especially the Bush White House are almost unmatched. They've given about $6 million to politicians over the last decade -- three quarters of it to Republicans. They are very close to President Bush. Ken Lay (ph), the chairman was one of Bush's pioneers in the 2000 campaign -- people who committed to raise $100,000 for him.

They let - they let President Bush as a candidate use company aircraft. They've hired lobbyists from both parties including the incoming chairman of the Republican National Committee as a registered lobbyist or has been a registered lobbyist for them, and in many ways they have worked to influence the political system here. And one of the questions that is being asked in Congress, but not nearly as loudly as it would be, is whether any of these regulatory agencies that have oversight of their, you know, various operations in effect were not as vigilant as they should have been as this disaster was unfolding.

(CROSSTALK)

BROWNSTEIN: So in normal times, this would be a very pointed issue in Washington right now.

O'BRIEN: So this is a story, as we say, that had some legs. We're going to be seeing this for awhile, right?

BROWNSTEIN: It will go on, but I think it will go on in a much different fashion than it would have without the events of September 11th. I think that the democrats in particular in Congress are going to be much more, you know, reluctant to making accusations at the White House at a time when President Bush is functioning as commander in chief. I mean it's one of the ways in which his enhanced stature relating to the war spills out over all other issues including the other one we're going to talk about.

O'BRIEN: Well you've brought us very nicely to the ABM Treaty. This is something that the democrats would appellate the president on not too long ago, and (INAUDIBLE) heard when he just abrogated the treaty.

BROWNSTEIN: Not only the democrats. I mean there maybe no issue whose trajectory literally and figuratively changed more as a result of September 11th than President Bush's desire to withdraw from the 1972 ABM Treaty, which prohibited the U.S. and then USSR from deploying defensive systems on the fear that it would - that would inspire kind of an endless arms (INAUDIBLE) between offense and defense.

Up until September 11th, the European allies were very nervous about this. You had the prospect of an intense reaction from Russia and as recently as a week before the attacks, the majority of the Senate on Services Committee on a party-line vote voted to bar President Bush from spending any money to violate the treaty.

Now after September 11th, all of that has evaporated. There seems to be - there's still resistance among democrats and Congress, but there's not a sense there's going to be a full fledged effort to stop this. The Russian reaction was very muted. The European reaction was extremely muted, and it all really has to do with the fact there are other concerns that seem larger at this point. So this has enormously changed the playing field on an issue that could have been one of the most controversial of the coming year - not only domestically, but internationally.

O'BRIEN: You got to wonder if anything our lives has been unaffected by 9-11. Ron Brownstein, thank you very much. As always, this is an interesting series this week and we'll see you soon, we hope, in the New Year. Take care.

BROWNSTEIN: Happy New Year to you Miles.

O'BRIEN: Same to you.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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