It's easy to forget the little people, as we sort through the big people who let the little people down, in what is growing into Washington's latest big scandal.

Chandra Levy's ex-boyfriend Rep. Gary Condit is not the only Washington scandal target to be relieved of pesky press attention by the war on terrorism. Were it not for the Sept. 11 terror attacks, it would not have taken until last week, when the Justice Department opened a criminal investigation, to put this story on the front burner of media attention.

Houston-based Enron has been Bush's most generous corporate contributor throughout his political career. Thousands of investors and Enron employees who presumably worked hard and played by the rules suddenly lost their savings and pensions because there was less to Enron's finances than they had been led to believe.

While Enron's stock crashed, the company's top executives may have been able to bail out quickly without telling the public or Enron's employees, who were not allowed at that point to move their pension funds from Enron stock to an investment that was making money.

Investors like to think they can trust the information they receive about a company's stability and finances, especially when it is a company for which they work.

If ordinary Americans cannot look to Washington to help them protect their hard-earned life savings from rip-offs like the Enron bankruptcy, you have to wonder what Washington is for.

Yet, when you look at Enron's cozy Washington connections, particularly with the Bush administration, you begin to wonder, as they say out in the rural areas, whether the fox was guarding the henhouse.

It is premature to put this developing blowup in the same league with major White House scandals of the past, but there are numerous unfortunate echoes: Bush's declaration that his good pal Enron Chairman Ken Lay never hinted at the company's precarious financial position echoes Bush's father declaring that he was "out of the loop" of the Iran-contra affair in the 1980s.

Disclosures that Enron's Chicago-based auditor, Arthur Anderson LLP, destroyed thousands of Enron files sound like the 18 1/2-minute gap in President Richard Nixon's White House tapes.

We even have - Hello, again! - a familiar face: savvy attorney Robert Bennett, who defended Bill Clinton against Paula Jones' accusations of sexual harassment. Now he is defending and spinning for Enron to reporters.

That's Washington. For the rich and powerful, it is a very small town. The same faces keep coming back. So do a lot of the same questions, on which the White House has its damage-control machinery working. The strategy includes:

Look proactive. Get Attorney General John Ashcroft, who received a now-embarrassing $25,000 contribution from Enron for his Senate campaign, to recuse himself.

Have Bush announce the criminal investigation, express sympathy for investors who got the shaft in "this awful bankruptcy" and announce new pension-disclosure rules to protect workers in other companies. Among Enron's ripped-off workers, that reform is called "closing the barn door after your horses, your mule and all of your dairy cattle have walked away."

Deny, deny, deny. "I have never discussed the financial problems of the company," Bush told reporters at a photo op. "The last time I saw Mr. Lay was at my mother's fund-raising event for literacy. That was in Houston last spring ..."

Jocular George usually refers to his pals by first names or nicknames. But Enron's chief, one of his biggest benefactors, suddenly was just "Mr. Lay," in the way Monica Lewinsky suddenly became "that woman." No, this scandal probably is not going away soon. Bush will have to learn to live with his losses, just like Enron's investors, although Bush's losses probably won't cost him as much.

'You begin to wonder, as they say out in the rural areas, whether the fox was guarding the henhouse.'

Copyright © 2002, Newsday, Inc.

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