The consequences of staffing a campaign with a legion of lobbyists

May 16, 2008

On Saturday, John McCain had to get rid of the man he tasked with managing the Republican National Convention when we learned he’d run a lobbying firm that represented Burma’s military junta. On Sunday, McCain had to get rid of a regional campaign manager because he’d been the lobbyist responsible for managing the junta’s account. Yesterday, McCain had to get rid of a campaign advisor who was working simultaneously for McCain and an independent “527” group opposing Democratic candidates. This morning, McCain dropped another aide, energy lobbyist Eric Burgeson, who had lobbied for Qatar and Serbia.

The problems have led the McCain campaign to do what it never thought to do before: vet the staff.

After a series of disclosures forced the resignation of two McCain campaign aides with ties to unsavory regimes, the campaign has decided to scrutinize the background of the entire staff to ferret out connections to lobbyists.

This morning, according to two Republicans with direct knowledge, Rick Davis, the campaign manager, e-mailed to McCain’s entire staff a memo entitled “McCain Campaign Conflicts Policy” — Effective Today” that includes a questionnaire asking about previous professional activities.

One of the questions asks: “Have you ever been a registered lobbyist at either the Federal or State level?” Another asks: “Have you ever been a registered foreign agent? A third asks staff members to list all of their previous lobbying or foreign government clients.

All staff members are required to submit the form to McCain’s campaign counsel, Trevor Potter and his staff, for their review. Employees who lie about their affiliations will be fired. The new conflicts policy prohibits campaign staffers from being “registered lobbyist or foreign agent, or receive compensation for any such activity.”

Marc Ambinder added that it’s not clear whether Davis, himself a former lobbyist, “plans to terminate employees who have lobbied for unsavory characters or corporations or governments.”

I’m going to assume not — McCain might not have any aides left if he did.

McCain aide Tom Loeffler and his firm “have made approximately $11 million in their contracts representing the Saudi Arabian government.” Aide Peter Madigan “represented the government of the United Arab Emirates in a class action suit regarding the enslavement of children as camel jockeys.”

But at the top of the list is Charles Black, McCain’s senior campaign strategist. Ol’ Charlie was on Fox News yesterday blasting Obama for his willingness to meet with unsavory characters like Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. The irony, of course, is that Black hasn’t just met with a motley international crew, he’s represented them as their lobbyists.

Indeed, Black has quite a client list, including (but by no means limited to) Iraq/Iran’s Ahmad Chalabi, Mobutu Sese Seko, Ferdinand Marcos, Somalia’s Mohamed Siad Barre, Nigeria’s Ibrahim Babangida, and Angola’s would-be dictator Jonas Savimbi. In each instance, Black was paid (handsomely) to boost their access, influence, and stature among U.S. policy makers.

And now he’s running the McCain campaign’s strategy, and bashing Democrats who believe in diplomacy with foreign heads of state, while doing client work from the back of the McCain campaign bus.

It’s quite a campaign operation McCain is running, isn’t it?

The irony, of course, is that Black hasn’t just met with a motley international crew, he’s represented them as their lobbyists.

You’re not talking if money or weapons are changing hands.

  • Forget it–there isn’t a Rethug that hasn’t had his hand in somebody’s till (or up somebody’s crotch). McCain has to look outside the party for staffing. Should be easy for the “maverick”, no?

  • REBULICANS NEED TO BE CALLED OUT ON ALL THEIR SMEARS, LIES, AND IGNORANCE IT IS JUST DISGUSTING!!

    CALL OUT MC CAIN NOW! ALL HIS FLIP-FLOPING IS TO MUCH

    SAYING OBAMA HAS NO EXPERIENCE, IF MC SAME ARE SOOOOOO EXPERICED AND ARE SO CALLED EXPERTS

    WHY ARE THEY SREWING UP THIS COUNTRY SO MUCH WITH THIS WAR?

  • cobsjo: I’m going to assume you only recently discovered computers and found the internet. Turn the caps lock off on your keyboard. It’s called “shouting,” and most “shouters” – no matter the quality of their actual content – are generally considered to come from the shallow end of the IQ pool.

    As regards McCain’s campaign – if the Republicans get rid of all the crooks and hypocrites, there will be no one left in the party!

  • “…aides with ties to unsavory regimes…”

    I thought that was a feature, not a bug.

  • Not that any of this was exactly unknown to Hon. Sen. McCain. The question is why all this activity now? Perhaps it’s a sign of the Senators advanced experience.

  • When you’re the son and grandson of four-star admirals, who nevertheless finished fifth from the bottom of your Naval Academy class of 899, you don’t need to develop that “second sense” which tells you something is wrong in the world around you.

    When the main stream media fawn all over you for the rest of your life after your “heroic” act of getting shot down and captured, you don’t need to develop that “second sense” which tells you something is wrong in the world around you.

    When you abandon your wife and kids to marry extreme wealth and no one in your circle points that out, you don’t need to develop that “second sense” which tells you something is wrong in the world around you.

    Lobbyists? What’s wrong with lobbyists?

  • OT: Edwards rules out VP run.

    Former presidential contender John Edwards said on Friday he would not be Democratic front-runner Barack Obama’s running mate, but did not rule out taking a role in an Obama administration.
    “Won’t happen,” Edwards told NBC’s “Today” program when asked if he would be Obama’s vice presidential pick. “This is not something I’m interested in.”

  • I am an attorney. Perhaps that really colors my view of how things should work.

    But before I go into a hearing, oral argument, pretty well anything important that involves interacting with people in real time, I work with associates to think about what issues and questions are likely to arise, and what we know that would be relevant both to respond and to turn the tables. And we do the same in reverse: what are the good questions we can raise, and if the answer is not what we expected, how can we pin the other side down with the record.

    Near as I can tell, this is what every attorney does and has done since pretty well the dawn of attorney-time.

    And so when I watch reporters/pundits/interviewers in the MSM interview McCain and the band of theives with whom he shares a party affiliation, I am always just stunned. They don’t seem all that overworked, and they seem to have staffs. Why can’t they do the simple, basic homework I do everyday? As soon as a McCain-ite raises any slander about Obama and being soft on terra’ists, how do reporters not have at their fingertips just as much information as Mr. Benen can find in a couple of hours this morning to write this post? (and besides, I watched Broadcast News – Holly Hunter can always Google something while the interview is going on and feed the reporter the question on the spot! There is just no excuse!)

    How, when and why did the press get so freakin’ lazy?

  • Edwards, translated: “I want a job with an actual portfolio other than waiting for a man my age and in better health to die or serve two terms.”

  • Hey who’s gonna drive the bus?

    Just about any reporter assigned to the McCain campaign, once enticed with a plate of ribs. Might not even require that.

  • I can reach across party lines to strike deals with Nazi appeasers who will talk with terrorists. I will sit down with those terrorist sympathizers, and unify the country.

  • just briefly glancing at the title of the post, I thought it was about Hillary’s campaign /snark

  • I don’t read comments that are printed in ALL CAPS. I just skip over them. Experience has taught me that they are almost always idiotic. I may miss a gem now and then, but so be it.

    If the McCain campaign bans from his staff everyone with unsavory lobbying associations, and hires only Republicans with clean hands who just want good government, not favored treatment for their clients…

    then no one will be working for him! 🙂

  • “represented the government of the United Arab Emirates in a class action suit regarding the enslavement of children as camel jockeys.”

    “Camel jockeys”? Seriously? Are you sure you didn’t get this story from the Onion?

  • It’s a joke, right? McCain, lobbyists and big money backers oh my. McCain is a parasite who has never done anything for the “people’s” interests. McCain, Bush and Lieberman have damned themselves with their recent ‘appeasement’ smear. Next Bush will be in Russia saying how democrats are against the Russian people because they would be against building missile bases there which would ensure another terrorist attack and Joe and John would spout their yahoo cowboy affirmations. If this keeps up McCain’s main problem in the next few years will be how much saliva to drool.

    Responsible caring people do not exist in McCain’s camp so of course he will have greedy self-centered advisers who are compromised by shady high dollar deals because those are the only people he represents. He will only find their clones who haven’t gotten that far yet to fill his campaign staff. What can you expect from someone who only represents economic royalists and the war machine and is against every social program ever instituted. Millionaires with over 7 mansions around the country flying around in private family jets know what about the country? Seems McCain has been well compensated for doing what exactly?

  • After a series of disclosures forced the resignation of two McCain campaign aides with ties to unsavory regimes,

    Gee, you mean McCain only has two campaign aides with ties to the current White House.

  • […] the campaign has decided to scrutinize the background of the entire staff to ferret out connections to lobbyists. — Marc Ambinder; the Atlantic

    “Ferret” them out??? All he has to do is throw a staff party and invite everyone; no “ferreting” required…

  • Is it merely a coincidence that McCain graduated at the bottom of his law school class? Nah. The man is an idiot. He is also deceitful and dishonest. His so-called “Straight Talk Express” bus needs to be renamed to the “BS Express.”

  • Like the journalists covering this primary season, not many of you are big into fact checking I see (or spell checking and grammar checking, for that matter). I’m not a McCain supporter, but I’ve yet to find another candidate that doesn’t have the same problem.

    Try this fill in the blank:

    “______ is blinded by personal ambition, driven to put self before party and country.”

    Like a good horoscope, this pretty much applies to the whole lot. The truly objective observer could easily write in Hillary, Obama, or McCain.

    Don’t kid yourselves.

    Your candidate of choice is no better than the rest. Some are more erudite (snobby), some more eloquent (vapid), and some more shrewd (cunning), but all have the same fundamental foible: blinding ego.

    All the good candidates have cut their loses and moved on. All the best prospects are not involved in politics in the first place (yes, politicians and lobbyists alike are all bottom dwellers). All this sets the stage for yet another general election with no good choices. And by good, I mean good for the whole country (e.g. economy, jobs, foreign affairs, education, security, optimistic outlook, national pride: things that affect us all), not good for some narrow constituency, ethnic group, gender or political faction and their attendant horde of “lobbyists”.

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