Vegacura: Lobbyists on the bus

I got a letter from Howard Dean:

It's like 1989 all over again -- John McCain has been caught in yet another ethics scandal.

If you had a TV on yesterday, you saw who jumped to his defense -- the team of lobbyists who work for him, led by campaign manager and lobbyist Rick Davis, and the well-oiled right-wing noise machine, led by Rush Limbaugh. In an ironic message to McCain supporters yesterday, lobbyist Davis wrote...
[John McCain] has led the charge to limit the money and influence of the special interests in politics and stomp out corruption.
They spent the day breathlessly assailing the New York Times as "liberal," ignoring the ethics lapses the team of reporters had uncovered. The fact is, John McCain is facing legitimate questions about lobbyists, favors, and campaign contributions, just as he did during the Keating Five scandal that nearly derailed his political career twenty years ago.

Seeing more dollar signs, the McCain campaign and the RNC decided to jump at the chance to take advantage of the distraction they had created to raise money. They had spent the day firing their supporters up, trying desperately to change the subject, and then they literally cashed in on it. It was textbook sleaze.

So, let's hit back.

Don't let John McCain's team of lobbyists, Rush Limbaugh and the right-wing noise machine, the RNC and their special-interest backers take advantage of John McCain's most recent ethics scandal -- it's disgusting, and we can't let them get ahead like this. They're screaming as loud as they can, and you can send a message right back:

http://www.democrats.org/McCainEthics

You and I know the truth. We know that John McCain is no maverick; he's no reformer. He promises the same ethics that have defined Washington and the Republican Party for far too long.

Just read what the Washington Post had to say today about John McCain's campaign operatives...
For years, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has railed against lobbyists and the influence of "special interests" in Washington, touting on his campaign Web site his fight against "the 'revolving door' by which lawmakers and other influential officials leave their posts and become lobbyists for the special interests they have aided."

But when McCain huddled with his closest advisers at his rustic Arizona cabin last weekend to map out his presidential campaign, virtually every one was part of the Washington lobbying culture he has long decried.
The facts are clear: from Keating Five to today, throughout his 25 years in Washington John McCain has consistently taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from his special interest friends, flown on their corporate jets, and then turned around and tried to do favors for them. And he's surrounded himself with just the type of people he claims to fight against -- including Rick Davis, Charlie Black, and senior advisers Steve Schmidt and Mark McKinnon.

McCain and the right-wing noise machine will do anything and say anything to win. Turning an ethics scandal into a fundraising opportunity is just the start, and exactly what you'd expect a team full of lobbyists to come up with.

Now we have to make sure that every voter in America knows it. We need your help to make sure we can take them on -- we can't afford four more years of lobbyists, corporate interests, and George Bush's Washington.

Send a message about how Washington should work. Match the McCain campaign and the RNC right now:

http://www.democrats.org/McCainEthics

Thanks for hitting back,
Howard Dean
P.S. -- John McCain may try to claim that the past careers of his advisers are irrelevant, but look at this passage from today's Washington Post article about Charlie Black, McCain adviser and chairman of lobbying firm BKSH and Associates...
But even as Black provide [sic] a private voice and a public face for McCain, he also leads his lobbying firm, which offers corporate interests and foreign governments the promise of access to the most powerful lawmakers. Some of those companies have interests before the Senate and, in particular, McCain's Commerce Committee.

Black said he does a lot of his work by telephone from McCain's Straight Talk Express bus.
John McCain literally has a lobbyist for "corporate interests and foreign governments" working from the "Straight Talk Express."

Where will they work from if he wins the White House?

Make a contribution right now to stop this kind of politics:

http://www.democrats.org/McCainEthics

Earlier, I was reading Ryan Lizza's rather odd essay about life on the "Straight Talk Express" and came upon this passage:

In the front of the bus are eight captain’s chairs, where McCain’s senior advisers and an assortment of family members sit. These include McCain’s wife, Cindy; one of his senior strategists, Charlie Black, a quiet North Carolinian who heads one of Washington’s biggest lobbying firms; Mark Salter, McCain’s writing collaborator and longtime Senate chief of staff. Absent that Sunday morning were the Blogettes—McCain’s daughter Meghan and two of her friends, who together write a lively online chronicle of their adventures on the campaign trail.

I read that before I received Dean's helpful note, so my head snapped back. One of his "senior strategists" heads (not "formerly headed") "one of Washington's biggest lobbying firms" and Lizza finds nothing particularly remarkable about that.

I guess since his name's on McCain-Feingold he doesn't have to abide by it.

But my point is, if that doesn't warrant so much as the literary version of an arched eyebrow from Lizza than what will? The essay answers this question by repeating what is becoming a theme for journalists and pundits who write about McCain. Sure he lies, uses underhanded political hit jobs to advance his campaign, and panders like crazy, but it pains him to do it.

Somebody said to McCain that Romney had said he should apologize for twisting the intent of the words, and McCain became indignant: “He ought to apologize to the men and women who are serving, because they deserve steady and steadfast leadership, particularly when times are tough. And his statement obviously was looking for the blinking exit sign.” He continued, “I remind you again, it’s just a fact, that at that point, in April, 2007, it was at the worst point. Harry Reid”—the Senate Majority Leader—“is giving speeches on the floor of the Senate saying the war is lost. He didn’t say, ‘The surge isn’t going to work,’ he didn’t say, ‘We are going to fail.’ He said it was lost. All the Democrats were outdoing each other: ‘I’ll get them out in six months,’ ‘No, I’ll get them out in three months,’ ‘No, I’ll get them out tomorrow,’ ‘I’ll get ’em out. We’re losing.’ ”

McCain showed a flash of anger. “And those same people were saying McCain’s political ambitions are at an end. The fact is you also know that John Edwards was calling it ‘the McCain strategy’ and ‘the McCain surge,’ and not because he was trying to flatter me. That was a genuine seminal time as to whether we were going to go forward with the additional troops, which was, I admit, highly unpopular—highly unpopular.” McCain picked up his index card. “Quote: ‘You don’t want the enemy to understand how long they have to wait in the weeds until you’re going to be gone.’ That’s not helpful! That’s not helpful!” He tapped the index card on the table as he pronounced each syllable. Another reporter gently tried to point out that Romney didn’t support withdrawing the troops. McCain wouldn’t yield: “If he didn’t think that they were going to be gone, then he wouldn’t have said that. It’s just a statement of fact.”

This episode, the final important volley of the Republican primaries, nicely captured two sides of McCain. There is the principled McCain, who, more than any other candidate running for President this year, has a record of sticking to a position even when it puts his political future at risk. In this campaign, his positions on the surge and on immigration (he supported a guest-worker program and a path to citizenship for illegals) almost sank him. But there is also the political McCain, who knows that a reputation for standing on principle is a valuable commodity, though only if it’s well advertised. If it takes flogging a dodgy quote to emphasize a larger truth about your own character, then so be it.

Although Lizza's piece pales in comparison with this masterpiece, from the Times' resident capital "L" liberal.

In short, Mr. McCain truly has principles that he bends or breaks out of desperation and with distaste. That’s preferable to politicians who are congenital invertebrates.
I disagree with Mr. McCain on Iraq, taxes, abortion and almost every other major issue. He has a nasty temper, which isn’t ideal for the hand holding a nuclear trigger. For a man running partly on biography, he treated his first wife, Carol, poorly. And one of the meanest put-downs in modern political history was a savage joke that Mr. McCain publicly related about Chelsea Clinton when she was 18 years old; it was inexcusable.
Yet Mr. McCain himself would probably acknowledge every one of these flaws, and he is a rare politician with the courage not just to follow the crowd but also to lead it. It is refreshing to see that courage rewarded by voters.

Kristoff's inane, Somerby-killing nonsense about McCain notwithstanding, did he really write, and the Times print,