God Needed a Former Energy CEO with a Knack for Creative Accounting in Heaven: Kenneth Lay 1942-2006

Maybe the energy grid in Heaven needs to be reconfigured. Maybe God's books need to be balanced with a little creative accounting. Maybe God just needed a charming, folksy angel to pal around with. Or maybe after teaching him a little lesson in humility, God just wanted to spare His good friend and supporter the ignominy of spending years behind bars. Whatever the reason, former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay is now the newest angel on Heaven's corporate board.

Ken Lay was the embodiment of the American Dream and a shining example of the blessings God bestows on America. The son of a Baptist preacher, Lay grew up poor. Yet he never lost his faith in God or the possibilities that America offers those who work hard. Even in his darkest hours Lay said, "My family and I believe that God is in control and, indeed, He does work all things for good for those who love the Lord." If the Lord was testing Lay the way He tested Job, Lay apparently passed with flying colors.

I'm sure President Bush wishes he could attend the funeral of his good friend Ken Lay but he probably feels that his presence would be a distraction just as it would be at the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq, which is probably why he hasn't attended any of those either. After all, if he attend the funeral of one friend convicted of corporate fraud, he would have to attend them all. I'm sure President Bush would agree, however, that to know Ken Lay was to love him.

One thing everyone says about Lay is that he was "charming" despite his failure to charm the jury into letting him off. President Bush called him "Kenny Boy" and the two were great friends until the President's duties left him little time to socialize. In his first Presidential campaign President Bush and Vice President Cheney flew around the country in Lay's company jet and Lay was the largest contributor to their campaign. When Cheney needed some help putting together an energy plan, Lay was one of the corporate executives who attended secret meetings to help him write it. Lay was always giving his friends advice. He once sent the President an article about globalization by everyone's favorite columnist Thomas Friedman, although he warned that "it includes some of Friedman's own biases toward particular safety nets." The President in his inimitably laconic way said the article was "very interesting." It's no surprise that Lay would not be a fan of "safety nets." He preferred to work without a net as he pulled himself up by his own bootstraps.

No doubt some of the former employees suing him will be disappointed that now that Lay is dead they won't be able to collect punitive damages for the way he rent their own particular safety nets. But they will have learned a valuable lesson: Trust in the Lord, not your 401K. Of course, if President Bush had been allowed to privatize Social Security, they might not be quite as worried about their retirement plans. But perhaps they can gain solace from knowing that their money did make some people happy. Mrs. Lay may have lost her husband but she will always have fond memories of the birthday when he gave her a $200,000 yacht, ironically named Amnesia. One thing you can say about Americans is we are not an envious people. We get a vicarious thrill out of the conspicuous consumption of the wealthy. Who knows, maybe some day it will be us! It's just one example of Americans' eternal optimism, another quality Lay had in abundance. Even as Enron's share price began to plummet, Lay urged his employees to buy more. And his wife seemed to share his infectious hopefulness, waiting until the very last minute, in fact, just ten minutes before the news of Enron's problems broke, before she sold her shares.

I think Tony Snow summed up all of our feelings about the tragedy of Ken Lay's death when he said, "What do you think would be the appropriate thing to say?" Sometimes words are not enough to express our grief and Snow's touching, almost poetic facility for inarticulateness says all that needs to be said. Or perhaps Marlene Dietrich's eulogy for another larger than life figure, the small-town sheriff played by Orson Welles in Touch of Evil, is a fitting tribute to the legacy of Ken Lay: "He was some kind of a man. What does it matter what you say about people?"

Jon Swift, Enron, Ken Lay, Kenneth Lay, Energy, Bush, Cheney, Thomas Friedman, Politics, Economics