Like it or not, politicians often must deal with shady characters to get ahead. They have to raise too much money to avoid it. Knowing when to end the relationship is the key to keeping their hands clean.

As President Bush scans his many problems today, he can at least take heart that the Enron criminal trial now winding down in Texas never touched him or anyone on his team.

Here is one political threat that members of the White House team managed well, distancing themselves from Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay, keeping secret their pre-scandal conversations with the firm’s lobbyists and quickly getting out front with reform proposals.

This dodge-the-bullet formula is now in play once again, as the Bush White House tries to avoid being part of the collateral damage in the meltdown of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. As before, the White House insisted Bush barely knew the culprit, refused to give details on meetings with him and urged Congress to pass a law.

In both cases critics are left with nothing but hyperactive imaginations and circumstantial evidence to try to tarnish the president with the deeds of former friends and supporters. It helps Bush that Abramoff and Lay committed acts so egregious that, without hard proof, most Americans find it unthinkable that Bush would ever have condoned such behavior.

And in both cases, reform laws made made headway in Congress, giving politicians a platform to boast about fixing problems they actually helped create. (Still, one of the Enron reforms still outstanding — beefing up private pensions — is mired on Capitol Hill and under siege by lobbyists seeking to weaken it.)

The Bush White House shut down Enron’s pipeline to their inner circle at just the right moment, when, in 2001, a distressed Lay called Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans, a longtime friend of Bush and Lay, for help before the energy company collapsed in America's biggest bankruptcy ever.

Evans offered no help, and neither did Treasury Secretary Paul H. O’Neill or any of several other administration officials on the receiving end of Lay’s pleas for a bailout.

There are lessons here for politicians and financial contributors. First, politicians and their staff must know when to fold the cards on a supporter at the precise moment when further help could lead to allegations of a cover-up. As ever, it is usually the cover-up that gets the bad guys, not the activity that was being covered up. To seek a bailout of Enron Corp. would likely have made the Bush White House co-conspirators in a cover-up of the company’s misdeeds.

For contributors seeking to influence politicians, beware giving them too much. The more you give the more likely the smart ones will stop taking your calls when you need them most. In an odd way, the Bush officials’ abrupt dismissal of Enron’s problems indicates just how much they might have known about what was going on at the company. A stressed airline or other major company without such cozy ties most likely would have gotten at least a meeting or two, and maybe even offers of concrete help.

The federal courts provided another critical moment in shedding Bush’s Enron baggage. Last year eight appellate judges held that Vice President Dick Cheney did not have to disclose the membership of his 2001 energy task force or the advice they gave in shaping national energy policy.

Although White House aides acknowledged high-level meetings with Enron executives, the court ruling shielded them from revealing just how close their ties to the company might have been. Imaginative critics can make claims, but nothing that can be proved or disproved.

Bush’s high-profile advocacy of corporate reform in the wake of the Enron scandal four years ago helped him don the white hat at a tipping point when the White House feared it would be tainted by the plight of company employees losing their life savings. And Congress did enact several changes in accounting procedures and employee rights that would aid future victims.

But all this time later it looks as though what Congress might ultimately pass to reform pension programs could do little to help workers in a failing company that did not adequately fund its retiree program. A study by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation concluded that the bill now being completed in a House-Senate conference would actually weaken the private pension system.

Watching Washington “reform” usually reminds me of the tale about how Michelangelo handled a papal request to reduce the size of David’s nose on his famous sculpture. He grabbed a handful of shavings, climbed to the top, made a scraping sound and dropped the shavings without actually touching a thing. The papal representatives cheered the beauty of this magnificent revision that wasn’t.

Bush is no sculptor, but dodging harm in the Enron scandal was truly a political work of art.

Contributing Editor Craig Crawford is a news analyst for MSNBC, CNBC and “The Early Show” on CBS. He can be reached at ccrawford@cq.com.