The Top 10 Corporate Democrats-For-Hire

By Russ Baker, AlterNet. Posted August 24, 2006.

The media like a simple story line -- and Joe Lieberman's defeat in the Connecticut Senate primary fits the bill: Pro-war senator goes down. Anti-war progressives ascendant, Republicans gleeful, and so forth. But Lieberman is more than an ally in the Bush administration's dissembling on Iraq. He is yet another example of someone who came to Washington as a purported idealist and turned into a creature of the capital's big-money culture. Lieberman's loss is a loss for Cheney and Rumsfeld to be sure, but it's also a loss for an army of sleazy political operatives and consultants.

While Lieberman is best known outside of Washington for his neocon views, he's famous in the capital for his undying support for corporate causes. There are countless examples: Remember Lieberman's role in blocking the reforms of stock option accounting that former SEC chair Arthur Levitt was trying to enact? This was a question of honest accounting that became part and parcel of the corporate corruption scandals of recent years, and Lieberman was a champion of the wrong side.

Beyond that, Lieberman happily has done the bidding of the pharmaceutical companies, the insurance companies and many others, thus establishing an unsavory underside to his more admirable record on environmental and other issues. And of course, his support of and continued rationalization of the Iraq invasion, like many of Lieberman's other stances, has served chiefly to benefit large corporations, in this case the "national security/homeland defense" industry that got a huge boost from Bush's reckless military adventurism. It's no great surprise to learn that Karl Rove called Lieberman the other day after his loss, and described him as a "friend."

Lieberman and his defenders have tried to portray his brand of politics as "centrism." But it has little to do with mainstream voters and much to do with the money culture of Washington of which many Democrats have become a part. And yet, Ralph Nader is wrong in his blanket condemnations of Democrats: You still are more likely to find someone willing to stand up to the big money boys among Democrats than Republicans. But the gap is narrowing. Voters sense it.

How big a problem is the growing influence of the bipartisan Beltway Party? Details on this can be found in a report from the Real News Project, a new nonprofit noncommercial investigative reporting outfit I founded. RealNews examined the track records of prominent Washington Democrats, consultants, advertising and public relations executives, lobbyists, attorneys and the like who have close connections to the top circles of their party. Many of them served in the Clinton-Gore White House, and many of them will likely be tapped should a Democrat be elected in 2008 and have considerable influence in a future Democratic-controlled Congress.

We scrutinized scores of Washington Dems and found many ensconced in firms working to advance corporate agendas that don't look that different from policy we see emanating from the Bush administration. To be sure, many of these people have redeeming qualities, represent some admirable causes as well, and may personally harbor inclinations for the greater good. Yet, in trying to earn a handsome living in Washington, they apparently do what a person's gotta do. Can political success and influence be attained without working for The Man? Let's defer that debate for another time and start with a few facts.

First, let's check in with Mike McCurry, President Clinton's former press secretary. He's a partner at the firm Public Strategies Washington, Inc., and serves as chairman of Hands Off the Internet -- an outfit created by telecom companies such as AT&T and BellSouth which, paradoxically, want to put their hands ON the internet by creating what amounts to internal tariffs on internet traffic for large downloads and such. The hands that are supposed to stay off are those of regulators or legislators who want to keep the internet free.

Want Clinton? Over at a "strategic communications" company founded in 2001, you've got enough Friends of Bubba to fill a VW bug. There's McCurry's successor as Clinton spokesman Joe Lockhart, and Al Gore's top strategists Carter Eskew and Michael Feldman. There's Howard Wolfson, former spokesman for Hillary Clinton and executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. And Joel Johnson, senior adviser for policy and communications to President Clinton.

When an election pops up, nearly the entire top brass rush to work on it. Lockhart and Wolfson, for example, took leaves in 2004 to work on the Kerry campaign and at the DNC. Johnson went from another firm to the Kerry campaign, then joined Glover Park.This mixture of politics and business seems to be working, because in 2005, the firm was ranked the fastest-growing private company in the District of Columbia.

What business, you ask? Even before Glover Park, Eskew, who has done media work for Sens. Chris Dodd, Joe Lieberman, and Tom Harkin, and is close to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, was criticized for his work providing media advice to the tobacco industry. This time around, Eskew has been working again for Lieberman.

Russ Baker is a freelance journalist and essayist. He is the founder of the Real News Project.

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