Sen. Chris Dodd allowed the fall of Enron.

I found this post unpublished in the draft folder so it is a little late but still useful.

I really hope Senator Obama does not pick Senator Dodd as his running mate. Senator Dodd is personally responsible for the law that allowed the crimes at Enron to occur. He initiated the veto override that passed said law. The following excerpts are from an article in the NY Times dated, Dec. 23, 1995.

By NEIL A. LEWIS
Published: December 23, 1995
For the first time, Congress overrode a veto by President Clinton today, as the Senate mustered the necessary two-thirds majority to enact a bill to limit stockholders' rights to file fraud suits. Because the House had voted decisively on Wednesday to override the veto, the law took effect immediately upon the Senate's action. As a result, it will be far more difficult for individual stockholders to file suits against underwriter-brokers, company officials and accountants in cases of securities fraud.......

the ringmaster of the event was clearly Senator Christopher J. Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat who is also the chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
Mr. Dodd undertook the task with a brisk zeal, rounding up votes in the House as well as his own chamber. Within minutes of opening on Wednesday, the House voted to override the veto by 319 to 100 ........

The new law alters the system, in place since the middle of the Depression, which relied on a combination of Government and private actions to discourage such fraud........

Some who were involved in the deliberations inside the White House said that Mr. Clinton had been urged by several senior officials, including Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin, to approve the legislation. "Everyone was telling him: 'Sign it, sign it,' " said one person involved in the internal debate.
But lawyers in the office of the White House counsel enlisted some prominent law professors, feeling they had no political agenda. In the end, the President relied heavily on the analyses of Profs. Donald Langevoort of the Vanderbilt University Law School and John C. Coffee Jr. of Columbia Law School, both acknowledged experts in securities law.

There were several big cases even before Enron. Like Enron, Sunbeam was a client of Arthur Andersen. In the late '90s, Sunbeam's controversial CEO, Al Dunlap, used accounting tricks to paint a false picture of the company for Wall Street. And, also as at Enron, Andersen accounting documents were destroyed in the midst of an investigation. These were the types of events that were allowed to occur because of the veto override.