McCain's "Karl Rove" Must Go

Posted by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report at 3:50 AM on May 19, 2008.

Following up on an earlier item, the McCain campaign has had to get rid of its convention manager, one of its national finance co-chairs, a regional campaign manager, and a senior aide, all within the last week, and all because they were lobbyists discovered to have worked for controversial clients, most notably Burma’s military junta.

But if McCain is just now starting to realize the problems associated with lobbyists with scandalous client lists running his campaign, he may have little choice but to get rid of Charles Black, McCain’s senior campaign strategist and chief political advisor. Black, in other words, is McCain’s Karl Rove. MoveOn.org’s political action fund is running a powerful and accurate ad that’s hard to respond to:

The irony, of course, is that ol’ Charlie was on Fox News this week blasting Obama for his willingness to meet with unsavory characters who run rival nations. Black hasn’t just met with a motley international crew; he’s represented them as their lobbyists and cashed quite a few of their checks.

Black’s client list includes (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.

But it’s the Mobutu connection that may be the most offensive of all.

Black boasts of his lobbying work, “I’m not ashamed of anything the firm did.” Matt Yglesias argues he should be.

There’s no question that helping the Mobutu regime in Zaire was something the American governments of the time were okay with. But anyone who had anything to do with aiding Mobutu and isn’t ashamed of it really needs to get his conscience replaced. I highly recommend Michela Wrong’s book, In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu’s Congo. American support for Mobutu was an enterprise that involved a lot of people over a long period of time, so Black’s hardly the only one with something to be ashamed of, but he really ought to be ashamed.

I’d just add two things. First, Black has argued that his work on behalf of thugs and authoritarian tyrants is justified because the dictators were not necessarily rejected by the U.S. government at the time. Except, as Christopher Orr explained, this doesn’t make for much of a coherent explanation: “[C]laiming that you only worked for dictators the U.S. government liked is not much of a defense when a central part of your job was convincing the U.S. government to like them. It’s a little like saying, yes, I made a ton of money defending a series of murderous mafiosi — but remember, I always quit working for them once they were convicted.”

And second, Black and the McCain campaign are arguing this was all in the past, and no longer relevant. “I’m a retired lobbyist,” Black says. It’s worth noting, then, that as recently as March, Black wore two hats at the same time — McCain’s senior strategist, and active lobbyist. In fact, he was doing client work from the back of the McCain campaign bus.

If McCain is serious about cleaning up his house, and getting his internal lobbying mess straightened out, Black is going to have to go.

Tagged as: lobbyists, john mccain