He came to office as a free-market, deregulation Republican, but yesterday President George W. Bush found himself lecturing some 1,000 chief executives on his plans for tightening business regulations to restore investor confidence in Corporate America.
Mr Bush was responding to public outrage in the US over a series of company scandals. His high-profile call for a new era of integrity in Corporate America coincided with troubling new questions about his own share dealings in a Texas energy company a decade ago.
The president's main proposals included a corporate fraud task force in the Justice Department, an extra $100 million (€101 million) for the Securities and Exchange Commission, 10-year prison terms instead of five for mail and wire fraud, criminal prosecution for shredding documents, the forfeiture by executives of money received through fraud and the approval by shareholders of stock option payments to executives.
Executives should not take tens of millions of dollars from companies about to go bankrupt, said Mr Bush - a remark that could have been directed to his one-time friend, former Enron chief executive Mr Kenneth Lay, who was the former Texas governor's single biggest fund-raiser.
The president's record as director of Harken Energy in Texas in the early 1990s is suddenly threatening to dog his presidency in the way Whitewater blighted former president Bill Clinton's first term in office.
As he was speaking in a hotel beside Wall Street yesterday, the Democratic leaders in Congress, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, were holding a press conference in Washington to argue that Mr Bush's strong financial and political ties to the business world undercut his credibility as a reformer.
They questioned statements Mr Bush made at a news conference late on Monday, when he was asked about Harken, which was forced by the SEC to amend its books after $10 million in losses was hidden by the sale of a subsidiary to a group of insiders.
"There was an honest difference of opinion as to how to account for a complicated transaction," said Mr Bush, who was on the company's audit committee at the time. Asked if he approved of the deal, Mr Bush shrugged and replied: "You need to look back on the directors' minutes."
Mr Bush was also the subject of an insider stock trade investigation by the SEC after he had four times disclosed sales of Harken stock outside the legal time limit, though no action was taken.
Asked to explain an eight-month delay in reporting the sale of stock for $850,000 just before the share price collapsed on bad earnings news, Mr Bush said: "I still haven't figured it out completely."
Mr Gephardt ridiculed Mr Bush's explanation of his oil company's actions, that: "Sometimes things aren't exactly black and white when it comes to accounting procedures."
"Mr President, with all due respect, accounting should be black and white, clear, precise and easy for every employee and every investor to understand," Mr Gephardt said.
Senator Daschle, appearing with former WorldCom and Enron employees to announce their own "investor's bill of rights", said: "It is not enough to talk about accountability; you have to act to ensure it." He called for Mr Bush's support for a tough Senate bill to tighten oversight of the accounting industry.
In his speech, Mr Bush did not mention the bill. He called, however, for a stronger SEC with 100 new enforcement officers, a reversal of his proposal for a "zero-growth" budget earlier this year for the SEC that would have meant staff reductions in securities fraud investigations.
"The business pages of American newspapers should not read like a scandal sheet," the president said.
"I am calling for a new ethic of personal responsibility in the business community - an ethic that will increase investor confidence, make employees proud of their companies and regain the trust of the American people."
