Hightower Lowdown

The media horde trailing George W. Bush has been like a cat watching the wrong mouse hole. Reporters keep watching for any sign that he used cocaine 25 years ago, they want to know if he can name the foreign minister of East Shishkebob, and they keep a close eye on whether he's easing away from the far right on issues like abortion. Meanwhile, the clearest sign of who this guy really is—of who he will serve as president—is right in front of them: His financial contributors!

W goes out of his way to insist that while he's raised a barn full of campaign money (now topping $60 million) it has come from some 135,000 "regular folks" who have sent in their little folded-over $20-bills. Cute. Too cute. The truth is that "The Bombastic Bushkin," as his pals nicknamed him back in his days of "youthful indiscretion," is the candidate of corporate executives, Washington lobbyists, and Republican fat cats—a group that has every expectation of collecting a nice return on their political investment in GWB Inc. A few facts the Bush spin meisters would prefer you not know:

•Far from getting his $60 million checks

•Of the 389 CEOs of major corporations who have invested in a presidential candidate, 75 percent have bought into the Bushkin.

•Several industries with major issues pending in Washington are early and eager enthusiasts for a Bush presidency—79 percent of the high-tech execs who have made presidential contributions are in the Bush camp, as are 79 percent of food industry CEOs, 80 percent of pharmaceutical honchos, 91 percent of utility bosses, and 92 percent of oil & gas barons.

•Bush is the new "King of Bundlers"—the campaign finance loophole that lets a CEO or lobbyist collect a mess of $1,000 checks from associates and present them as a fat bundle to the grateful man who might be president. Among the bundlers delivering tribute to Prince George are Citigroup ($72,000), Goldman Sachs ($84,000), Bank of America ($85,000), Merrill Lynch ($87,000), Morgan Stanley Dean Witter ($92,000), Enron ($92,000), Equitable ($124,000), Anderson Worldwide ($147,000), MBNA America Bank ($161,000), and lobbying giant Vinson & Elkins ($185,000).

This corporate largess is not flowing into Bush's coffers because he is a "compassionate conservative," but rather because he is a dedicated crony capitalist, having demonstrated as governor a tail-wagging proclivity for pleasing his big campaign contributors. A cadre of powerhouse Washington lobbyists, led by electric utility point man Thomas Kuhn, know that Bush can be counted on to be big business' best buddy, so they made an unprecedented early move to put America's corporate boardrooms behind him.

Kuhn helped organize a closed-door dinner last July at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce headquarters, just one block from the White House. About 15 lobbyists for America's major industries—oil, utilities, automobiles, timber, chemicals, and others—rose one by one after dinner to pledge their industry's fealty (and money) to the cause of putting W in the oval office. Frederick Webber of the Chemical Manufacturers Association was there, and he later told the Washington Post that his massively-polluting industry was greatly enamored of Bush's "hands-off style of regulation," referring to the governor's relaxed policy of allowing the worst polluters in Texas to comply with the state's clean air laws only if they want to do so. "We want to do things voluntarily," said an enthusiastic chemical company executive backing Bush.

Also on board is Red Cavaney of the American Petroleum Institute, who dead panned to the Post: "Our industry is intimately familiar with him, and we've found him to be very approachable," perhaps referring to the special tax break for big oil that Bush rammed through the Texas legislature this year as an "emergency measure." Tim Hammonds of the Food Marketing Institute was equally laudatory, expressing confidence that George W "would please the food industry by dismantling Clinton-era workplace safety regulations."

Bush boasts of his small contributors, but more than two-thirds of the bales of money he is receiving comes from his "pioneers"—a small group of about 400 lobbyists and corporate executives who have committed to raise at least $100,000 each for him. Utility lobbyist Kuhn, who is one of the "pioneers," says there is no problem getting CEOs behind Bush: "From international trade to the service industries to retail, I think people are very, very excited."