The ‘birds of prey’ have landed at McCain campaign headquarters

Oddly enough, when I started going through the news this morning, I noticed a story about John McCain criticizing lobbyists, and thought that would have to be the big political story the day. That, of course, was before I noticed that McCain couldn’t keep track of all the houses he owns.

Nevertheless, overshadowed or not, this really is pretty crazy.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called lobbyists “birds of prey” Wednesday and vowed to enforce a lifetime ban on lobbying for members of his administration. “Whenever there’s a corrupt system, then you’re going to have these birds of prey descend on it to get their share of the spoils,” McCain said in a half-hour interview with Politico following a town-hall meeting in the southern part of this swing state. […] The senator went so far as to say: “Lobbyists don’t come to my office. Because they know they’re not going to be an earmark. They know they’re not going to get a pork-barrel project.”

Even by McCain standards, this is transparent nonsense. Putting aside the fact that McCain, like every other senator, has sought and received earmark, the reality is lobbyists do come to McCain’s office, and as a rule, once they get there, they’re given influential jobs in the McCain campaign.



McCain’s campaign manager is a lobbyist. His chief strategist is a lobbyist. His top foreign policy advisor is a lobbyist. The man he tapped to run the Republican convention is a lobbyist. His top two senior advisors are both lobbyists. His campaign is being financed by donations from lobbyists, bundled by other lobbyists.

In one rather dramatic anecdote, McCain actually had a corporate lobbyist conducting business directly aboard his campaign bus.

Of all the lobbyists involved in the McCain campaign, the most prominent is [Charles] Black, who has made a lucrative career of shuttling back and forth between presidential politics and big-time Washington lobbying…. [E]ven as Black provides a private voice and a public face for McCain, he also leads his lobbying firm, which offers corporate interests and foreign governments the promise of access to the most powerful lawmakers. Some of those companies have interests before the Senate and, in particular, the Commerce Committee, of which McCain is a member. Black said he does a lot of his work by telephone from McCain’s Straight Talk Express bus.

By one count, McCain has at least 159 lobbyists, on leave from their firms, running his campaign operation. It’s why McCain has defended lobbyists and the lobbying industry over and over again.

“Whenever there’s a corrupt system, then you’re going to have these birds of prey descend on it to get their share of the spoils.” It sounds like the corrupt system McCain is describing is his own presidential campaign.