Meet The New Boss...

Matt Yglesias has noticed that the conservative establishment is not nearly as ashamed of the legacy of Jesse Helms as he thinks they ought to be. This is of course a major difference between the parties - literally nothing that conservatives do on ideological grounds can get them excommunicated from the party, while outspoken liberals are routinely shunted to the margins just for being outspoken, and for sins incomparable to Helms'. This has been happening for years. Conservatives will only drop you if you hurt the movement; then they'll tell everyone that you were never a conservative to begin with (e.g. George W. Bush).

The problem here is that I think Americans of all political stripes can agree that Helms was an avowed racist. Sure, my NPR report on his passing yesterday carefully explained that he "used race effectively" in his election campaigns, but I'm not sure there's any difference. While racism is still a fact of American life, it has been pushed underground, not to be talked about in polite society, so that everyone can delude themselves that these issues are no longer germane and that we're all one big happy melting pot.

Helms didn't do that, and neither did his advisors. And one of them now holds a high position in the John McCain campaign.

1984: Black Advised Helms on Senate Re-Election Bid and Bragged About Victory. The Washington Post reported, “‘It’s a tremendous victory for conservatives,’ Helms’ strategist Charles Black said. ‘It enhances his clout and influence in the Senate in the eyes of the press and his colleagues. He’ll be even more effective than he has been.’” [Washington Post, 11/8/84, emphasis added]

Black and Helms Used “Racist Appeals” to Win. Politics reporter Bill Peterson wrote in The Washington Post, “Lesson: A vicious new electronic form of negative politics has evolved and matured. And it is frightening. It is a politics of distortion, half truths and character assassination. Ends are used to justify means. Truth often takes a back seat. … Helms and the National Congressional Club, a political action committee run by his allies, had used negative advertising long before the Senate race began. … Racial epithets and standing in school doors is no longer fashionable, but 1984 proved that the ugly politics of race are alive and well. Helms is their master. A case in point was the pivotal event of the campaign: Helms’ filibuster against a bill making the birthday of the late Martin Luther King Jr. a national holiday. … Helms campaign literature sounded a drumbeat of warnings about black voter-registration drives. His campaign newspaper featured photographs of Hunt [his opponent] with Jesse L. Jackson and headlines like ‘Black Voter Registration Rises Sharply’ and ‘Hunt Urges More Minority Registration.’ Helms shamelessly mined the race issue.” [Peterson, Washington Post, 11/18/84, emphasis added]

1990: Black Advised Jesse Helms. As He Ran Controversial “Hands” Ad Against Black Candidate. Newsday reported that Helms, “through a series of blistering advertisements unleashed just days before, had beckoned the long-simmering issue of race to the surface of this senatorial contest. In doing so, Helms had hurled the campaign into its most bitter and acrimonious phase to date, namely by labeling his opponent, falsely, an advocate of racial job quotas and accusing him of conducting a ‘secret campaign’ in the black community. … On the television commercial, the camera zones in on a white man’s hands, crumpling what apparently is a job rejection letter. The announcer then intones: ‘You needed that job and you were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota. Is that really fair? Harvey Gantt says it is,’ the message continues. ‘Gantt supports Ted Kennedy’s racial quota law that makes the color of your skin more important than your qualifications.’” Black, an adviser to the campaign and a consultant for the Congressional Club — Helms’s political machine — insisted the race would come down to turnout: “‘What it’s going to come down to is turnout,’ said Charles Black, chairman of the Republican National Committee and a Helms adviser. ‘It’s, no question, the biggest challenge at this point.’” [Newsday, 11/4/90]

Black Defended “Hands Ad.” Black defended Helms’s “Hands” television ad, which featured white hands crumpling a job rejection letter and linking Helms’s black opponent to racial job quotas. Asked about the ad on the MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour, Black said, “Well there is nothing racial about the campaign.” When asked if there was anything improper about the ad, Black said, “Of course not.” Another guest on the show, DNC Chairman Ron Brown, pressed Black again, saying, “You are a principal adviser of Jesse Helms. Would you advise him to run that kind of ad, Charlie? Do you approve of that ad, Charlie?” Black responded, “I advised Jesse Helms to do what he’s always done.” [MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour, 11/5/90]

This is not to say that McCain is a racist (though voting against the King holiday at the age of 46 doesn't exactly speak well of him) but that there's an essential continuity between this Republican candidate and those of the past. They have a new campaign staff in what Krugman is calling the battle for Rove's third term. If they thought it would help they'd go to a medium and summon up the ghost of Lee Atwater. The tactics are just as harmful and noxious, playing to fears. And the common thread is that they know how to play the press to maximum advantage. They loved Jesse Helms then as now because he "did what he's always done" and it worked. In a way Barack Obama is an imperfect foil for these types of expected attacks - they'd rather be far more indirect than come out and say "do you want this man in the White House?" But make no mistake - this is the legacy. And it's one that's unbroken.

It's All In The Timing

Today the Colombian government made a daring rescue of political prisoner Ingrid Betancourt, three Americans and other hostages from the FARC paramilitary group. John McCain just so happened to be in Colombia at the time. He has one senior advisor, Charlie Black, with longstanding ties to the government, having represented Occidental Petroleum (Colombia's top foreign producer of oil and gas) for many years. Another backer, Carl Lindner, recently pleaded guilty to funding a terrorist group inside Colombia, the AUC (the right-wing paramilitaries who have been fighting the left-wing FARC. Colombia is complicated). Terrorist groups are OK when they're right-wing and in South America, you see.

The point is that McCain's camp has connections with the Colombian government. If they could've moved on this rescue mission a week ago, but could also see an opportunity to please their American masters who they get billions in aid from, and help the national security perception of a trusted friend, I don't see why they wouldn't.

Putting It Out There

If anyone thinks Charlie Black is sorry for saying this, they're nuts. This is completely calculated.

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December was an “unfortunate event,” says Black. “But his knowledge and ability to talk about it reemphasized that this is the guy who’s ready to be Commander-in-Chief. And it helped us.” As would, Black concedes with startling candor after we raise the issue, another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. “Certainly it would be a big advantage to him,” says Black.

He's backtracked on it now, and McCain strenuously disagreed, but the target for that comment were media types. The only reason it is conventionally assumed that a terrorist attack is good for Republicans is that Republicans keep saying it, and when they say it, the media listens. They're perfectly willing to risk sounding ghoulish in the short-term so that they're prepared for every talking head explaining in the wake of a terrorist attack how the Republicans have been enhanced. I'd call it mind control but it's not nearly so difficult; more like that scene where Crocodile Dundee raises two fingers in front of the bull and makes him go to sleep.

Does this mean Republicans welcome terror attacks? More like it means they like to be ready for the eventuality. And they know there will be no time for reasoned discourse in such a moment. So they're hitting the hammer under the knee to make sure it'll jerk when circumstances demand it.

More Than Divestment

On the same day that John W. McCain gives a speech to the powerful pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, where he calls for a worldwide divestment effort to isolate Iran, it is revealed that such a divestment would significantly hurt the balance sheets of members of his own campaign:

In the summer of 2005, John McCain's chief strategist Charlie Black, working for his firm Black, Kelly, Scruggs & Healey, was paid $60,000 to lobby the U.S. government on behalf of the Chinese oil conglomerate CNOOC. At the time, CNOOC was mounting an aggressive bid to buy Unocal, a California-based oil giant, and Black was tasked with churning up congressional support. But the bid ultimately fell through, in part because of objections over the China oil industry's ties to Iran, a country in which it had already invested tens of millions of dollars.

"This transaction poses a clear threat to the energy and national security of the United States," wrote Rep. Joe Barton, a Texas Republican. "U.S. national energy security depends on sufficient energy supplies to support U.S. and global economic growth. But those supplies are threatened by China's aggressive tactics to lock up energy supplies around the world that are largely dedicated for their own use." [...]

as demonstrated by the CNOOC anecdote, if choking off Tehran's economic lifeblood is McCain's goal, he could have personally started down that road years ago -- with his own advisers.

This is the second member of McCain's inner circle with lobbying ties to Iran that has been discovered in just the past few days - campaign manager Rick Davis was the first.

Matthew Yglesias notes that this is part of a larger problem with using divestment to deal with most states.

In a highly globalized economy, it's difficult to try to hermetically seal off Iran economically. You start divesting from firms that do business with Iran, but then you still have firms that do business with firms that do business with Iran. Divest all you like, but Iran still has oil that people want to buy, which gives Iranians money they want to use to buy things with. Which isn't to say that economic pressure is totally ineffective, but how effective it is has a lot to do with how wide the network of pressuring entities is. A really global sanctions and divestment campaign can deliver enormous blows, while unilateral measures are difficult to really enforce in a serious way.

Sudan, who has a far more limited economic picture relative to Iran, is easier to isolate, but in the final analysis, nothing beats good old-fashioned multilateral negotiation. We may never sever the economic ties that bind Iran to the globalized world, but we can gain diplomatic strength with a unified position and a broad set of actors willing to make the concessions necessary to reach agreement. If changing the behavior of Iran is the goal, only an international effort in all possible arenas, not just financial sanctions, will be successful. In fact, as Ilan Goldenberg notes, the last time Iran was faced with international consensus against its nuclear program, they actually ran to the bargaining table.

McCain argues that the Clinton Administration already tried engaging in 1998 and that the entreaties were rebuffed. He’s right. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei vetoed any talks at that time. But McCain is selectively cherry picking history. The story of the last 15 years between Iran and the U.S. is one of missed opportunities on both sides. The best example is from 2003, where right after the start of the Iraq War senior officials in the Iranian Foreign Ministry sent the “Grand Bargain fax” to the Bush Administration outlining what a deal between the U.S. and Iran might look like. The Bush Administration decided not to respond because of its position of strength at the time and the belief that Iranian reformists couldn’t deliver on their promises. In the late 1980s and early 1990s Iran worked to have Hezbollah release all of the American hostages in Lebanon and in exchange expected greater engagement from the United States. But while the first Bush Administration had signaled that it would in fact engage after the 1992 U.S. Presidential elections, when they lost, the Clinton Administration decided instead opt for a dual containment policy. Elements in the Iranian government who had supported engagement with the U.S. ended up feeling spurned. The story is much more complicated than: “the U.S. has tried talking and Iran has refused.”

But that wouldn't look good on a bumper sticker. Certainly not as good as "Bomb bomb bomb Iran."

McCain's Lobbying Problem Goes Mainstream

Ever since John McCain implemented new rules that should have forced him to fire his entire staff, and ended up in him actually firing his convention manager, one of his national finance co-chairs, a regional campaign manager, and a senior aide, there was no way for the press to ignore such a barrage without reporting on it. Not to mention the fact that BarackObama started talking about it as well.

"It appears that John McCain is very much a creature of Washington and one of the things that we've said from the outset of this campaign is that if we're gonna change policies, if we're gonna deliver on universal health care or have an energy policy that over the long term can bring down gas prices that we were gonna have to change how Washington works," Obama told reporters Sunday at an ice cream shop in Milwaukie, Ore. "We can't have special interests dictating what's happening there and that's why I said at the beginning I wouldn't take PAC money and I wouldn't take money from federal lobbyists. And it does appear that over the last several weeks John McCain keeps on having problems with his top advisers being lobbyists, in some cases for foreign governments or other big interests that are doing business in Washington that I don't think represents the kind of change that the American people are looking for."

It's enough of a tie to "old Washington" and the failed policies of the past that McCain's got the least popular President in the history of modern polling coming to raise money for him next week. That alone will dip his poll numbers. But the ubiquity of the lobbyists in his campaign finally breaking out into the open is deadly, because he's carefully cultivated the image of being an independent maverick, and it's being assaulted on all sides.

"It's the biggest anti-Washington streak in the American electorate in decades, and McCain's problem is that his campaign is full of Washington-lobbyist types," said Chris Kofinis, a former John Edwards aide. "You can't be the guy who is striving for reform when the people who run the campaign are fighting against reform."

Democrats have hammered McCain on that very issue for months, noting that campaign manager Rick Davis and senior adviser Charlie Black have spent decades lobbying in Washington. Both have left their companies.

Yes, Davis left the company, but his name's still on the lobbying firm's letterhead, which means they're making money based on his association to McCain. Bad job by the AP there.

McCain isn't going to be able to run from these associations but we're now down to people like Black and Davis who aren't expendable. The information will continue to mount on sites like McCainpedia. And activist online video like this one from Brave New Films will continue to expose the deceptions and undercut the straight talk reform image. And the front-page stories almost write themselves.

The Value Of Outside Groups

This is a great ad by MoveOn.



You could actually fill about 5 more with all the slimy characters Black has associated with - including Blackwater, the dictator of Equatorial Guinea, etc., etc., etc.

MoveOn is able to do this in a way that Barack Obama can't. They can be stronger and more hard-hitting than the guy running for President. It's an amplifier and a motivator. It puts major pressure on McCain.

And Obama can't really shut it down because MoveOn has figured out its own citizen-based funding model.

There should be no fear in this.

McCain To Fire Entire Staff

If he's really going to look into the backgrounds of everyone working for him and fire those who have, er, unsavory lobbying associations, the whole staff has got to go.

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."

I mean, if this were legitimate, Charlie Black would have to go. I doubt he will. His campaign manager Rick Davis would have to go. That's not going to happen. What's more likely is that a few functionaries, like this guy whose lobbying firm worked for Qatar and Serbia, will be let go, and McCain will go back and boast to the media about how he upholds the strictest ethical standards (even though Obama had these rules in place from Day One), and nobody will bother to bring up the lobbyists still inside the campaign, or that these fired ones were involved with him in the first place.

All McCain has is that independent perception. Once, not if but once, that goes away, he'll be left with nothing. His trying to pre-empt it now means he knows it's a big problem.

...also, the stories that keep coming out detailing the favors he did for wealthy contributors can't be helping, either.

Sen. John McCain secured millions in federal funds for a land acquisition program that provided a windfall for an Arizona developer whose executives were major campaign donors, public records show.

McCain, who has made fighting special-interest projects a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, inserted $14.3 million in a 2003 defense bill to buy land around Luke Air Force Base in a provision sought by SunCor Development, the largest of about 50 landowners near the base. SunCor representatives, upset with a state law that restricted development around Luke, met with McCain's staff to lobby for funding, according to John Ogden, SunCor's president at the time.

The maverick thing is a double-edged sword, because if you envision yourself above politics, yet are the same old politician, these stories are more damaging.

UPDATE: Doesn't this also mean that McCain will have to fire his wife for making all those investments in the Sudanese government?

All The Lovely Lobbyists

John McCain's firing of two lobbyists who worked for the military junta in Burma opened a window into his many other associates who have dealings with some of the worst dictators and bad actors on the planet. Charlie Black is a one-man wrecking crew all by himself, consorting with Blackwater, Chiquita (who has admitted to paying terrorists in Colombia), Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, Ferdinand Marcos, Mohammed Said Barre of Somalia, and maybe the worst, Jonas Savimbi of Angola.

Those of you who were too young to be paying attention during the 1980s might not remember Jonas Savimbi and his organization, UNITA. Briefly: there had been armed resistance to Portuguese rule for years, but when Angola became independent of Portugal in 1975, a full-bore civil war broke out. It lasted, with a few short breaks, from 1975 until Savimbi's death in 2002. It started as a scramble for power after independence, heightened by the Cold War. (Apparently, declassified documents show that we intervened before the USSR and Cuba. I didn't know that.) Savimbi, who started out as a Maoist and a Portuguese agent, became one of our guys (he was also heavily supported by the apartheid government of South Africa); his main rival, the actual government of Angola, was supported by the USSR and Cuba.

During the 1980s, this turned into a full-bore Cold War proxy fight. This did not have to happen. We could have let Angola be. Its government was dreadful, but Savimbi was no rose either; even if you think that we should intervene in other countries, when a country seems to have a choice between two awful options, there's no real point in choosing sides, and certainly no point in plunging a country into civil war to get your side to win. This would not have prevented civil war -- Savimbi was supported by South Africa, which had a policy of trying to bog down the states near its borders in civil wars -- but it would have meant not actively contributing to the destruction of a country for no good reason. Alternatively, we could have chosen to support Savimbi, who was even more dreadful, in a civil war.

We chose to support Savimbi, with predictable results:

"The tap that Kissinger had turned on, and Carter had turned off, was opened again in 1981, when Ronald Reagan approved a covert aid package for Unita. South African Special Forces were good at what they did. Unita’s performance was already much improved by comparison with its half-hearted exertions against the Portuguese. Even so, Washington’s financial and diplomatic backing was an immense boost. The country, which was now a Cold War cockpit, remained undefeatable, but it could be comprehensively ruined, and this is what happened. The figures for war-related deaths, and child deaths in particular, leapt dramatically in the 1980s. Towns and villages were deserted or shelled to extinction. The countryside was a living death. There were landmines and limbless people everywhere (there still are). Young men were press-ganged into the burgeoning rabble of the Angolan Army, where the discipline of the elite units could not hope to reach. Unita kidnapped and abducted its fighters or picked up the homeless, traumatised survivors of Government offensives. Some of them were so-called ‘child soldiers’ – ‘premature adults’ is a better description. Provincial capitals became slum havens for hundreds of thousands of displaced people. Savimbi’s struggle, subsumed though it was in a large-scale offensive driven by South Africa and paid for in the United States, had come home to Angola."

Charlie Black was UNITA's lobbyist - and he's continued to lobby for his clients from aboard the Straight Talk Express. This is just a taste - you should read the whole thing at hilzoy's.

Campaign Money Watch has jumped on these unsavory associations and is demanding McCain to fire the lobbyists, which of course would be his entire campaign staff, so it's not going to happen. So they're focusing on Black, Tom Loeffler and Peter Madigan, who have worked for some of the most repressive regimes. Progressive Media USA has more.

Eventually, I'm sure that the traditional media will get around to covering this. Right. Maybe sometime around the first press conference after the inaugural.

Legs

Bud Paxson has now officially contradicted St. Maverick on his blanket statement that he never met with the broadcasting mogul, which of course was already contradicted by John McCain himself in a sworn deposition.

Broadcaster Lowell "Bud" Paxson today contradicted statements from Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign that the senator did not meet with Paxson or his lobbyist before sending two controversial letters to the Federal Communications Commission on Paxson's behalf.

Paxson said he talked with McCain in his Washington office several weeks before the Arizona Republican wrote the letters to the FCC urging a rapid decision on Paxson's quest to acquire a Pittsburgh television station.

Paxson also recalled that his lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, attended the meeting in McCain's office and that Iseman helped arrange the meeting. "Was Vicki there? Probably," Paxson said in an interview with The Washington Post today. "The woman was a professional. She was good. She could get us meetings."

Of course she could get meetings with John McCain. The man has a soft spot for lobbyists. And it's something when your alibi is "But I never show up for work!"

"Senator McCain was actively engaged in a presidential campaign in 1999-2000, and according to his calendar, the last day he conducted business in the Senate was November 8, 1999, and was frequently absent from the Senate prior to that date," the statement said.

"He returned to the Senate the night of November 19, 1999, for one hour to participate in a budget vote, and the Senate adjourned shortly thereafter on November 22, 1999. Between November 22, 1999 and Christmas, the Senator did not return to the Senate for any substantive meetings as he was involved in a national book tour and a presidential campaign."

Why should I be impressed that you were on a book tour instead of doing your job?

So now here's yet another drip of the faucet, with McCain absolutely caught in a lie, contradicted by everybody involved. And of course, the scenario of McCain doing favors for corporate interests who contributed to his campaigns and let him use the corporate jet is a wormhole into his long history of close involvement with lobbyists. Whatever he did with Iseman, she was certainly around the 2000 campaign, bragging about her access, and told to put and end to it (by named source John Weaver). McCain was holding fundraisers arranged by the lobbying firm aboard the yacht from a cruise line they represented (and he sponsored bills to deregulate the cruise line industry around that same time). And this isn't just a side issue from 2000, it's basically the same setup right now. He has more lobbyists raising money for him than any Presidential candidate. He has more lobbyists on staff than any Presidential candidate. And while he defended them in comments today, these aren't people who represent the poor or the environment or Constitutional rights. They're folks like Charlie Black, the guy who runs his lobbying shop out of the back of the Straight Talk Express bus (no lie).

Among the loudest McCain mouthpieces is Charlie Black, a seasoned Republican operative whose client roster dates back to such paragons as the late Filipino President Ferdinand Marcos and several African dictators, and more recently has featured Erik Prince, the mercenary entrepreneur who founded Blackwater. (Black's wife is a lobbyist too, and his firm, known as BKSH, is owned by Burson-Marsteller, the enormous P.R. conglomerate chaired by Hillary Clinton's top campaign advisor, Mark Penn.) McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, is also a lobbyist, whose client interests in the broadcasting and cable industry overlapped with those represented by Iseman and her firm, Alcalde & Fay. During the off years between presidential elections, Davis collected donations from companies regulated by the Senate Commerce Committee, chaired by his boss McCain, for the amusingly named "Reform Institute," which also paid handsome sinecures to Davis and various other McCain campaign consultants. McCain's chief fundraiser is Tom Loeffler, a prominent lobbyist and former Texas congressman whose clients range from PhRMA to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The print media is aggressively reporting this story, as the broadcast media tries to hold back the floodgates. The New York Times deserves some criticism for leading with the sex angle and going with sourcing that is a little thin. But all of these allegations about McCain's lobbyist ties have been out there for some time. They even got printed every so often, but always on the back pages of the paper. It took a bombshell to get most of the media to take notice. Now that they have, we can all see that the sex angle really doesn't have much to do with the fact that Mr. Reform, Mr. Straight Talk, Mr. Maverick, is actually just Mr. John McSame, another Republican crook who rewards those who reward him. And wait until they get to the defense contracts he's shoveled to constituents in Arizona.