Subject: [big campaign] TPM on McCain's Lobbyists
From: David Donnelly <[email-masked]>
To: big campaign <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 May 2008 16:09:00 -0400
List-Id: <bigcampaign.googlegroups.com>

Paul Kiel has a solid take on Charlie Black¹s response to our campaign to
demand that McCain fire the lobbyists (http://firethelobbyists.com) and
MoveOn¹s email yesterday asking members to give advice to McCain.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/05/when_lobbying_for_dictator
s_is.php 

When Lobbying for Dictators Is OK
By Paul Kiel - May 14, 2008, 3:20PM
The McCain campaign has provided an ongoing tutorial in the subtle ethics of
lobbying. For instance, you might think that a politician who professes to
be abhorred by special interests would not surround himself with lobbyists.
Not so. What a politician can be drowning in lobbyists -- what matters is
his integrity. And for that, you'll just have to take his word.

Charlie Black, McCain's campaign chairman and a veteran lobbyist, provides
another tutorial today. Some have criticized the McCain camp for keeping
Black while other McCain campaign officials have had to resign for their
lobbying on behalf of Myanmar's ruling junta. Black lobbied for plenty of
shady characters, they say, including Ferdinand Marcos and Jonas Savimbi.
But Black has an answer for that. He has a code:

> Black said he never took on work for foreign figures "without first talking to
> the State Department and the White House and clearing with them that the work
> would be in the interest of U.S. foreign policy."
> 
> For instance, he said, the U.S. considered Marcos an ally when his firm took
> on work for his government, and "when the White House pulled the plug on
> Marcos, we resigned the account the same day," Black said. He said his firm
> was hired to help show [Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire] how to form political
> parties and conduct elections, and when Mobutu canceled the results of the
> parliamentary election, "we quit."

This rule would surely also cover Black's work for Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi
National Congress, which provided much of the dubious evidence that formed
the administration's case for war with Iraq, and the Lincoln Group, the
State Department contractor that was hired to plant stories in the Iraqi
press. So I guess there's no problem with that.

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