They say it's business, not politics. But James Sandrolini is not buying it.

The Chicago Tribune and the ever-right-tilting Sun-Times have taken largely a business-as-usual approach to the Enron scandal: rest assured, citizens, this is merely a business scandal and not a political one. Apparently, when you're a highly popular president, due largely to an unpopular set of hijackings, you are beyond any serious political scandals, or for that matter, just about any real criticism at all.

In a commentary entitled "Soft Money Flavors Spirit of Democracy' (2-11-02), the Sun-Times mentions Enron only once in its discussion of soft money and campaign finance reform. The author tells us the company "certainly didn't seem to get its money's worth when it was circling the drain." Poor Enron.

Enron got its money's worth all right. Before the company "circled the drain," it had installed its former employees in high offices across the land, particularly in D.C. Its cozy government connections also helped muscle its deregulatory desires in California and elsewhere where the company went on to hit paydirt. A number of its senior executives had extracted enough from its grossly inflated stocks to retire at an early age. Yet, the Sun-Times tells us Enron didn't get its money's worth. Did anyone at Enron really expect their paid-off goons in Congress and the White House to wait up for them to come home?

The Tribune's Steve Chapman manages to insult everyone with his January 24 column: "A Non-Solution to a Non-Scandal: Campaign-Finance Reformers Should Bypass Enron."

We get the example of a beleaguered, even betrayed Enron getting the door slammed in its face when it needed help the most. "When his (Lay's) company needed help in a crisis, it reaped a handsome harvest of ingratitude."

Chapman claims that the failure of politicians to bail Enron out is an example of campaign finance reform. So what more would we want? Of course, real campaign finance reform would have pretty much prevented the Enron fiasco in the first place.

He reports the Bush campaign received only $114,000 from Enron. According to www.opensecrets.org, in 1999-2000 Enron contributed $2.4 million in federal elections (72% to Republicans) – $1.6 million of it came in soft money. Enron also made a corporate jet available for the Bush campaign, and gave $100,000 to the Bush inaugural gala, which was matched by Jeffrey Skilling and Kenneth Lay (who also gave $10,000 to the Bush recount fund). Attorney General John Ashcroft took $57,499 from Enron and Lay for his failed 2000 Senate campaign.

And then to defy whatever we knew about the time-worn adage "money buys influence," Chapman offers this incredulous assessment of influence peddling: "But there has never been much evidence that corporations can assure special assistance by giving to candidates – or that donors in general have much influence on how the recipients vote."

Chapman should send a memo to all the ad agencies and PR companies, telling them they should save their billions: big, splashy advertisements simply don't work.

Finally, Chapman makes the one admission we've been waiting for: "Of course, the danger of quid pro quo is not entirely imaginary." In other words, there is a crack in the windowsill that may allow in some degree of ill wind, but then we can just as easily shut the window tight so that everything is secure.

So Chapman has another memo to get out as soon as possible. To all corporate CEOs and underlings of major US companies, support your candidate with your hard donations but save the millions in soft donations for yourselves. They won't get you anywhere. Money simply won't buy influence in Washington, DC. No, sir.

At times Chapman makes little sense at all. "In reality, the amount of authentic corruption is far less than the reformers claim." If he's talking about Enron, how could he possibly know this so early in the investigation? If he's talking about the overall system of dollars for votes in the US, then he is making a grandiose and in fact laughable claim with nothing to support it.

Finally, he leaves us with this chestnut: "If Enron's bigwigs thought the campaign finance system was a giant bazaar of favors bought and sold, they know better now. When will the reformers figure it out?"

Excuse me, when will the reformers figure what out? That boat-loads of money coming from the private sector may affect decisions of cash-strapped politicians? It's safe to say we've all figured this one out already.

Secondly, when was the last chance these reformers, including not a few Republicans wanting to keep their jobs after November, had an honest chance to improve the system? That would be 1974, following the horrendous political abuses of Watergate and Richard Nixon's White House.

Chapman and the editorial staff of the Tribune and the Sun-Times treat the Enron case as if it were nothing more than a bunch of drunken teens who went for a wild ride one night and smashed into a tree. They simply don't see the forest for the trees.