On Friday's "Crossfire," Republican consultant Ed Rogers made an obvious point, saying that "these bogus accounting practices ... didn't start on Inauguration Day, January 21st," to which Begala replied, "No, Bush was doing it when he was in business, Ed."

Note the logical flaws and unanswered questions in those arguments. How does a "climate" actually cause corporate executives to engage in wrongdoing? Aren't changes in specific incentives -- such as threats of prosecution, pressures to increase profits, and opportunities for personal gain from stock options -- obviously more relevant than a "climate," an "atmosphere," or the alleged example of Bush? If Bush largely carried over the same policies that were in place under Clinton, how did this "climate" suddenly arise?

In response to all this, a number of Republicans have fought back by reversing the Democratic claims and suggesting that the "climate" of malfeasance was created by Clinton, blaming the former president for creating a "tone" of dishonesty that somehow led to fraudulent accounting, as Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz and Joshua Micah Marshall have noted.

Radio host Rush Limbaugh, unsurprisingly, has again led the way. According to Kurtz, on Wednesday he said, "Who taught us how to get around laws? A, Ronald Reagan. B, Bill Clinton. Who taught us how to have his way with words and women? Who taught us, my friends, how to lie under oath and get away with it? Who taught us that oral sex isn't sex, and now kids across the country in grade school try it out?" Limbaugh also pointed to the Whitewater scandal, saying that "the president of the United States got away with all kinds of things and inspired others to try [it] themselves."

Former presidential candidate Steve Forbes pushed a similar argument on CNN's "Moneyline" about "the tone of the '90s," which "started right at the top, at the White House, where the attitude was anything goes. If you get caught, spin your way out of it." Republican strategist Rogers also claimed on Friday's "Crossfire" that this corporate fraud "didn't start when Bush was elected or when Bush was sworn in. It started during the Clinton bubble years, where we were all taught from the top down the truth is relative." And the National Review's Kate O'Beirne added her two cents on CNN's "Capital Gang" Saturday, saying "that high ethical standards in high places was not exactly a feature of the '90s, and that Bill Clinton -- which is what the Republicans will be saying, of course -- showed his own lack of respect for, for honesty."

Finally, writing in the Sunday Times of London, Andrew Sullivan jumped into the fray: "In some ways, [these scandals] were deeply consonant with Bill Clinton's cultural ethos. When the president of the United States acted as if the only ethical criterion that mattered was what he could get away with, it's not entirely surprising that this attitude seeped outward into the general zeitgeist. I'm not saying Clinton was responsible for this corporate corruption -- just that his administration was responsible for policing it and for setting the moral tone of the country."

These attempts to link corporate dishonesty to Clinton are a variant of an evolving tactic of blaming him for dishonesty of all types, particularly by framing it under the aegis of "Clintonization." On the August 24, 2001, "Hannity & Colmes," Sean Hannity blamed Clinton in this way for Gary Condit's apparent dishonesty in the Chandra Levy case. On August 31, 2001, Limbaugh even brought up 14-year-old Danny Almonte, who lied about his age in order to lead his team to a Little League World Series championship.

Many Democrats now believe corporate responsibility will be the issue that gives their party an edge in the 2002 congressional elections. Republicans fear they could be right. And so both sides are pushing these vague but powerful arguments about the other side's creating a "tone" or "environment" that somehow encouraged corporate malfeasance. But don't expect this gamesmanship to truly explain the roots of the recent accounting scandals or to provide solutions to the problems that caused them.

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