What's a self-respecting Democrat to do these days?

W is cruising along with an approval rating above 80 percent.

The Afghanistan thing is going pretty well, all things considered, and the recession seems to have bottomed out.

Why, just this week came the news that gross domestic product in the fourth quarter of 2001 grew by a 0.2 percent annual rate.

Despite the fact that 0.2 percent is very modest, it was still far better than most economists anticipated. The general view among the experts was that the GDP fell at an annual rate of 1 percent in the fourth quarter.

The Fed this week even decided against cutting interest rates again. I guess they figure the 11 rate cuts they put in place last year will be enough to initiate a sustained bounce in the economy.

In fact, with the unemployment report Friday showing an end to the bleeding in that statistic, some economists - including the National Bureau of Economic Research - are poised to say that the recession ended in December.

The NBER, as reported by Associated Press, says the recession started in March. That means it lasted about nine months, which would be two months shorter than average recessions since World War II.

Also according to AP, "Based on the current GDP data, total output will have declined by 0.3 percent, the smallest drop in GDP during a recession in postwar history. By comparison, the last downturn, the 1990-91 recession, saw a 1.5 percent drop in GDP."

That would make it one of the shortest and mildest recessions in post-war history.

This, of course, is great news to everyone.

Well, I shouldn't say everyone. It probably is pretty meaningless to the 1.4 million America workers who lost jobs since last march.

Mostly, I think people are feeling a little bit better about Afghanistan, terrorism and the economy.

And with the election coming up, this makes it tough to figure out a strategy to attack Republicans.

Unless of course you're James Carville. He's the guy who made a name for himself as an ardent Bill Clinton supporter and has become one of the top political strategists for the Demos.

What's his avenue to gaining seats for Democrats in the November election?

Enron.

He sent a memo to Democrats in Washington, essentially telling them the Enron bankruptcy may be just the Achilles heel of the W administration the Democrats are looking for.

He's may be right.

Enron is the energy trading company that went bankrupt, leaving a bunch of its employees penniless.

Enron officials, including CEO Kenneth Lay, met with Vice President Dick Cheney. If Cheney made a bunch of deals with Enron, giving them a lot of clout in crafting the nation's energy policy, that doesn't bode well for Cheney.

The Government Accounting Office wants W to turn over all the notes from the meetings that Cheney had with the Enron guys and other energy types regarding energy policy.

I think W should comply.

If there is one lesson in scandal politics, it's come clean and right away.

Don't hide stuff. Don't delay. Don't obfuscate. Don't stonewall. And above all, don't lie.

Bill Clinton knows. The first time anybody asked, he should have said, "Yeah, me and Monica fooled around in the Oval Office, whaddaya gonna do about it?"

There would have been lots of handwringing and media manipulation. The spinmeisters would have been working overtime for a while until the very short attention span of the American people waned.

Nixon in Watergate. Reagan in Iran Contra. They all should have just 'fessed up.

W says he's defending principle by not releasing the documents. He wants people to be able to have candid discussions with government officials about policy matters without fear of their comments ever being made public.

'The president will stand on principle and for the right of presidents and this president to receive candid advice without it being turned into a news release,' White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, told the AP.

I guess I am not impressed with that view. They are crafting public policy, after all. I think public policy, which generates programs funded by tax dollars, should be, well, public.

No one is asking for details of conversations between Cheney and his staff or W and his advisors. Those conversations will always remain private, and rightly so.

So the guys at the GAO say they will sue the White House to get the documents. That's never happened before and the GAO has been around for 80 years.

The San Francisco Chronicle published a story this week about a memo they obtained. The memo outlined the Lay/Cheney discussions.

Most of the discussions centered around California's energy crisis and how to deal with it.

Cheney spokeswoman Mary Matalin (who happens to be married to Carville) dismissed the significance of the memo. Nine of Lay's 11 suggestions were not included in the White House energy plan - and the two that made the report were noncontroversial, she told AP, adding, 'Just because some of the things (in the memo) are included in the plan doesn't mean they were from the talks' between Cheney and Lay.

Maybe so, but you know what? When you keep things like this secret it just makes it look like you have something to hide.

Craig McDonald is director of Texans for Public Justice, a watchdog group. He told AP he thought it was laughable for the administration to cast its secrecy as a defense of high-minded principle.

'All they're fighting for is to keep the wraps on how much clout Enron had over Dick Cheney's energy plan,' he said.

And that is exactly what most people probably think.

I think Cheney should turn over all the stuff and say, "Yeah, the Enron guy gave me some good ideas for energy policy. Who'd you want me to call, the Sierra Club?"

And then add, "Whaddaya gonna do about it?"

Come clean, put it behind you and move on.

If you don't, all you do is give your enemies a bunch of ammunition. [[In-content Ad]]