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At a G.O.P. convention in Chicago last week, Edward Rollins, co-chairman of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, described former Speaker Jim Wright, majority whip Tony Coelho and Congressman Fernand St. Germain, all of whom were forced out of the House because of their dealings with thrift operators, as "the Three Stooges of the S&L crisis." Democratic National Committee chairman Ron Brown shot back that Republicans can't escape the fact that "George Bush, Ronald Reagan and their high-roller friends ran the government, designed the S&L policy and handpicked the people that gutted the oversight agencies. They are now being forced to take responsibility for the greatest rip-off in American history."
Both parties have it right. The thrift industry's largesse was bipartisan, going to anyone in power of either political persuasion in hopes that no one would stop the party made possible by deregulation. When Common Cause compiled a list of contributions by the thrift industry to public officials, two of the top five Senate recipients proved to be Republicans (Pete Wilson of California and Alfonse D'Amato of New York) and three Democrats (Don Riegle of Michigan, Lloyd Bentsen of Texas and Alan Cranston of California).
The equal-opportunity $11 million that the thrifts showered on politicians turned out to be a wise investment. Even after the cost of bailing out thrifts (now estimated at $500 billion over 40 years) became apparent, the Republican White House and the Democratic Congress both had a stake in treating the S&L debacle as an accident of the marketplace. It was in fact the work of cash-hungry politicians, inept regulators and high-flying owners who used government-insured deposits to finance wildly speculative investments, corporate jets, hunting lodges and luxury yachts.
But the charges against Neil Bush are helping to make a scandal that the public had difficulty comprehending a bit more understandable. With the disclosure that Bush and the Silverado board approved loans to a Bush business partner that resulted in $45 million in losses, taxpayers are beginning to grasp an infuriating fact: it will cost every American man, woman and child $2,000 to pay for a decade-long orgy to which very few of them were invited. At last there was a human face that seemed to symbolize the scandal and how it had crept into every corner of the government, including the President's family.
With so much pent-up fury crashing over him, Neil Bush's lonely offensive last week to salvage his name seemed a lost cause. His father calls Neil "the most sensitive" of his four sons and one daughter. His poor performance as a student went unexplained until it was discovered he was mildly dyslexic. Though a high school guidance counselor told his parents that Neil would never get to college and shouldn't bother trying, Barbara Bush was undaunted, tutoring him herself and dragging him to special classes. Eventually, Bush earned an M.B.A. at Tulane. But Bush family friends say he never lost his naivete.