LAST WORD

Myron Kandel, the former CNN financial editor, would like to get the presidential candidates to pay attention to corporate governance issues. Whether he will get cooperation is another matter. Courtesy photo

I caught up with Myron Kandel the other day and he was a little frustrated. Kandel, one of the nation's preeminent financial and business journalists, talked to me about his latest adventures amid the circus we affectionately know as the New Hampshire presidential primary.

Kandel, the founding financial editor for CNN, has been occasionally commuting from Manhattan in his role as the president of the New Hampshire Initiative for Corporate Responsibility and Investor Protection. The organization was founded with settlement money from the Tyco scandal and Kandel was appointed by Gov. John Lynch to drum up public awareness about the long-term dangers of corporate corruption and investor abuse.

When I first talked to Kandel last year about the Initiative, he was planning to tie his public forums into the primary circus and raise the issues of good corporate governance to national stature. He's invited all the presidential candidates to sit down with him for a 30-minute discussion about issues such as business ethics and protecting investors. The bonus for candidates and voters is this: the discussions would be taped and run on New Hampshire Public Television. Given his stature in New York and Washington, Kandel was accustomed a certain level of cooperation.

At the time, I thought Kandel was tilting at windmills. Having covered many primary road shows since 1980, I know about the collision between good intentions from outside groups who want to raise the stature of their issues and the dictates of paint-by-numbers modern campaigning when "staying on message" is almost a religious imperative.

Kandel succeeded in getting Republican hopeful and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to sit down for one conversation and is hopeful the others will follow suit, but time is running out. The RSVPs from the other candidates have come in the form of silence or "don't call us, we'll call you" when their schedule allows it.

He won't come out and say it directly but I will: Kandel is getting stiffed by presidential candidates who may be less than enthusiastic to talk about matters of corporate governance and investor protection when they could be at the local town hall talking about their own issues. Kandel told me he would like to have an "informed conversational discussion," just the sort of time-wasting enterprise campaigns abhor.

There's also a minor matter of, ah, conflict of interest.

Kandel, who knows a thing or two about getting his point across, told me, "I'd hate to believe that some of the candidates are reluctant to discuss these issues publicly because so many campaign contributors are from the business sector. If that were true — and I hope it isn't — it would be a sad commentary on the integrity of the candidates themselves."

Kandel, who retired from CNN in 2005, saw more than a few generational cycles of corporate scandals during his five decades as a reporter. The last of those scandal spasms, the 2001-2005 scandal cycle that included, among others, WorldCom, Adelphia, Tyco, Enron, and the mutual-fund and securities industries, was troubling to Kandel and others because they were so brazen, big and almost beyond comprehension.

"They were notable because of their immensity — of the numbers of people, of shareholders and workers affected," Kandel told me about this post-retirement crusade to keep the vigilance level high. He believes these scandals have had a corrosive impact on our economic system, and was very disappointed that the 2004 election came and went without any serious discussion on the campaign trail about the importance of improved corporate governance.

Kandel knows that good corporate governance hardly registers on the radar screen of issues, especially after the scandal headlines fade and when the war in Iraq, health-care reform and global climate change suck up the policy oxygen. But Kandel is not deterred and given the rise of risky hedge funds and the subprime investment mess, he's determined to beat the drum even louder.

When candidates talk about tax cuts, economic growth, and reviving the middle class, Kandel reminds them such rhetoric is fanciful jibberish when unsound fundamentals and varying levels of institutionalized corruption threaten to undermine the foundations of democratic capitalism.

"It's my contention that anyone who aspires to be president needs to take on this topic," Kandel said.

Alas, don't hold your breath.