Bush showed a bit of independent activism in his first eight months, then came the war. The only outside interest shown since 9/11 was when the Enron revelations threatened his sponsoring corporate chieftains. Enron demonstrated how the management of many publicly held companies had become corrupted by an orgy of bonuses and options. Corporate heads needed to cut short the resulting reform movement. They awakened Bush from his war fixation and distaste for new proposals. He announced support for, first a limited restriction on the ability to cash in shares received in 401K plans, and, second, against a plan to penalize management that makes off with huge option awards only to see their stock crash. Bush’s efforts are an attempt to limit reform to something his mentors can swallow, although they have already reneged on the company stock holding time limitation. The Enron situation has the potential to correct the accounting problem and the excessive option awards that led to the cheating. Bush is trying to short circuit reform by putting soft proposals on the table.