Al Gore believes his role in streamlining the federal bureaucracy was one of his major achievements as vice president. The sale at auction of the huge, government-owned Elk Hills oil field in Bakersfield, Calif., to the Occidental Petroleum Company grew out of that effort. The winning bid was $3.65 billion. It was the largest sale of a government asset to private industry ever, and it got the federal government out of the oil business.
The Elk Hills transfer may or may not have been a good deal for taxpayers, and there is no suggestion the vice president did anything wrong. But the interests of democracy would have been better served if it had been widely known that Occidental Petroleum has for years been a major benefactor of Mr. Gore’s family.
Charles Lewis, the executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan investigative organization in Washington, notes in a new book, “The Buying of the President 2000,” that Occidental has been a “steady supplier” of campaign funds to Mr. Gore (who is known for his fund-raising excesses) and the Democrats. Occidental has also given substantial sums to Republicans. But back in 1970, when Mr. Gore’s father, the late Senator Albert Gore Sr., left the Senate, he was given a $500,000-a-year job as chairman of an Occidental subsidiary and a seat on Occidental’s board of directors. By 1992, said Mr. Lewis, the Gore family held Occidental stock worth $680,000.
John McCain campaigns on a bus known as the “Straight Talk Express” and has made campaign finance reform a cornerstone of his campaign. While his misadventures as a member of the notorious “Keating Five” are well known, it is not as well known that he went to bat for the Del Webb Corporation, a large residential developer, when it ran into trouble in its effort to exchange some of its own land for a choice government-owned parcel near Las Vegas. The deal that Del Webb eventually made was criticized by the inspector general of the Department of the Interior.
Senator McCain is a big deal to Del Webb, which is headquartered in Arizona and has been involved in a number of controversial land swaps with the government. Del Webb executives and employees have contributed more than $56,000 to Mr. McCain’s campaigns.
More than ever, politicians are anxious to portray themselves as straight talkers. But most voters know that hypocrisy is part of the essence of politics. What voters seldom know are the disheartening details of the treacherous webs of influence that often are woven by big money in politics.
In an interview, Mr. Lewis said, “The media, frankly, need to get a little bit away from the horse race, using the money as a litmus test of how viable a candidate is, and get a little bit more into those relationships that exist and that the voters don’t know about.”
In his chapter on Bill Bradley, Mr. Lewis wrote that during one year in the late 1980’s, a period when corporate takeover artists were flooding Congress with money, “the top recipient was none other than Bradley,” who supported tax policies favorable to corporate raiders.
He also wrote that Mr. Bradley, who is now a fervent advocate of campaign finance reform, was a champion recipient of other kinds of largess. “During his three terms in the Senate,” wrote Mr. Lewis, “he went on one junket after another – more than 160 in all. In 1996 alone, he took more all-expense-paid trips than any U.S. senator.”
George W. Bush has been held aloft throughout his career by favor-seeking special interests. Mr. Bush’s experience as an oil industry entrepreneur was, for the most part, a series of expensive stumbles. But in the late 1980’s he swung a sweet deal with Harken Energy Corporation, an oil exploration company near Dallas. Phil Kendrick, Harken’s founder, was quoted by Mr. Lewis as saying: “His name was George Bush. That was worth the money they paid him.”
Mr. Bush has raised more than $100 million in his two runs for governor of Texas and his current run for president, an astonishing total. How much of that money was spent in expectation of special access and special favors is a mystery to voters.
The “straight talk” of the candidates dissolves into silence when it comes to penetrating such mysteries.
