We here at dkos often complain, and rightfully so, about the media's tendency to treat John McCain with kid gloves and to be complicit in helping McCain maintain a bogus "maverick" image. So let's give kudos when the media actually do their job. Today the conservative-leading Tampa Tribune published a front-page story that blasts the "McCain maverick" myth and exposes the seedy underside of his closest adviser, Charlie Black (who was a University of Florida grad, who knew?). The information in the article is nothing new to most kossacks, but I think it's significant that the media is starting to finally tell -- gasp! -- the truth about McCain -- and a conservative paper in Florida to boot.
The article starts off with a bang:
Despite John McCain's carefully cultivated image as a maverick who puts principle over politics, his top campaign adviser is a Washington lobbyist who has been the consummate Republican political insider for decades, known for sometimes representing unsavory clients.
He has worked for the nation's largest and most powerful corporations and politicians, but also for controversial figures ranging from dictators in developing nations to a Medicare-defrauding Florida health management company.
Oooh, this is going to be good.
The article goes on to describe some of the most unsavory clients of Black's firm, Black, Manafort:
In its heyday, Black, Manafort reaped millions representing foreign clients including Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, dictator Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire and Jonas Savimbi, an Angolan insurgent who won U.S. backing for a civil war against that nation's Cuban-backed government but inspired international disgust at his brutal tactics...
Black has told other interviewers the firm cleared its foreign clients with the U.S. State Department and refused to serve them if it wasn't in U.S. interests. The firm, he says, dumped Marcos and Sese Seko when they refused to accept election results and hung onto their offices, opposing U.S. wishes.
Still, in 1992, the government watchdog group Center for Public Integrity listed the firm fourth among the top five firms in what it called the "Torturer's Lobby" - firms that got big lobbying fees from governments accused of human rights violations.
In addition to Marcos and Savimbi, the center cited the firm's work for the governments of General Ibrahim Babangida in Nigeria and President Daniel arap Moi in Kenya.
The article goes on to mention Black's work for such controversial clients as Ahmed Chalabi; Blackwater USA; and Miguel Recarey of Miami, founder of International Medical Centers, who used lobbying influence to obtain permission to serve large numbers of Medicare clients in his HMO.
The Tribune also notes that members of Black's firm included Roger Stone, a "legendary political dirty tricks artist" who jokingly referred to himself as "the prince of darkness" and was involved in the Watergate break-in; and Lee Atwater, Karl Rove's mentor.
Their presence lent the firm an image as the bad boys of conservative Republican politics.
(As an aside, I find it a rather telling sign of the age of McCain and his advisers that they're not connected to Karl Rove, who's relevancy is fading more and more each day, but to Rove's mentor.)
The article ends on a high note, pointing out the hypocrisy and irony in McCain's claims of being a maverick:
...in February, when McCain was defending himself after a controversial New York Times story about his ties to lobbyists, the man who went on "Face The Nation" to defend him was Black - the lobbyist.
I've read and heard many political experts say that with so many months to go in the general election campaign, the media would finally get around to reporting the truth about John McCain and stop treating him, as chumley put it, as a "delicate flower." Here's hoping this is a sign of a coming trend.
UPDATE:
Do we smell a trend? Today the Wall Street Journal, of all places, published an, um, unflattering op-ed about Charlie Black, written by Thomas Frank. Frank sheds some light on Black's participation in Young Americans for Freedom, the conservative group of the Vietnam era, which sang fascist hymns during the time that Black was an officer of the group. The money quote:
It's an interesting bunch Mr. Black has run with, and taken all together they help us understand the larger picture. What unites the conservatives of the 1970s with their pocket-lining counterparts today? A persistent derision for the notion that government might someday be conducted on the level. As that old YAF songbook put it, "Keep the faith with cynicism / Cut the opposition down!"
(H/T Crashing Vor)