The real definition of "Bully Pulpit"
Frank Rich used to be the theater reviewer for the NYTimes, and a roundly feared reviewer he was. He didn't like a great deal of theater, and when he didn't like a show, it generally closed pretty quickly. He was also well known for the particularly venomous tone of his writing, holding the producers, writers and actors to an incredibly high standard and slapping them unmercifully when they failed to measure up.
Fortunately for the theater and for the rest of us, he's now writing about politics for the New York Times, where last Sunday he wrote about "All the President's Enrons." A few selections to whet your appetite for an article you should read in it's entirety.
Speaking on ABC's "This Week," Richard Grasso, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, tossed out a range of 1 to 15 as the rough count of corporate culprits, "in comparison to more than 10,000 publicly traded corporations." The fact remains that so far at least five members of that theoretically tiny club have direct ties to the Bush administration: Enron, Halliburton, Andersen, KMPG and Merrill Lynch — the last three all former clients of the president's choice as Wall Street's top cop, the S.E.C. chairman Harvey Pitt. Five for 15: Mr. Bush could have used a batting average that high when he ran the Texas Rangers.
and:
It is Mr. Bush who is C.E.O. If he doesn't bring zero tolerance of corporate cheating to his own White House, it's hard to imagine Americans rushing back into the market trusting that his administration will enforce it anywhere else.
Didn't he and Dick make a big deal out of integrity in 2000?
3:31:33 PM
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