At every turn, John McCain is entangled by the ties of the lobbyists who serve as his campaign staffers and advisers. The sudden outbreak of war in the Caucasus brings to light an especially dangerous example of this, and suggests he'll never be free of his lobbyist problem.
McCain's top foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, was until March a registered lobbyist for the Republic of Georgia. His firm continues to work on behalf of Georgia and other countries in the region. In 2006, lobbyist Scheunemann accompanied McCain on a trip to Georgia. And since Friday, McCain and Scheunemann have been issuing bellicose pronouncements on behalf of Georgia in its conflict with Russia over the breakaway enclave of South Ossetia. However neither of them mentioned that Scheunemann was a Georgian lobbyist.
The conflict in Georgia also brought attention to another complicating feature of McCain’s campaign: His ties to Republican operatives with extensive lobbying practices. Scheunemann was, until earlier this year, registered to lobby for the government of Georgia.
A public relations firm working for the Russian Federation pointed out Scheunemann’s lobbying past to reporters — a sign that McCain’s stance is not, for better or worse, being welcomed in Moscow — as did Obama’s campaign.
“John McCain’s top foreign policy adviser lobbied for, and has a vested interest in, the Republic of Georgia and McCain has mirrored the position advocated by the government,” said Obama spokesman Hari Sevugan, noting that the “appearance of a conflict of interest” was a consequence of McCain’s too-close ties to lobbyists.
The conflict in South Ossetia is complex and nearly every observer of the situation blames both Georgia and Russia for escalating the long-simmering tensions there. As Ben Smith notes, Barack Obama issued a statement condeming the violence and urging both Georgia and Russia to end the conflict and avoid further escalation. It was similar to the line taken by the Bush administration and virtually all other western nations, all of whom recognize that there's plenty of blame to spread around and little advantage to wade in immediately scoring points against one of the parties to the war.
Not John McCain, however. His statement was frankly confrontational toward Russia, which he blames exclusively for the fighting. McCain also calls for NATO to be inserted into the conflict, though Georgia is not a NATO member. McCain also dusted off his bizarre call for Russia to be kicked out of The G-8. And Randy Scheunemann immediately tried to politicize the conflict - without however mentioning that he was a lobbyist for Georgia.
"Sen. McCain is clearly willing to note who he thinks is the aggressor here,” he said, dismissing the notion that Georgia’s move into its renegade province had precipitated the crisis. "I don't think you can excuse, defend, explain or make allowance for Russian behavior because of what is going on in Georgia.”
He also criticized Obama for calling on both sides to show “restraint,” and suggested the Democrat was putting too much blame on the conflict’s clear victim.
“That's kind of like saying after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, that Kuwait and Iraq need to show restraint, or like saying in 1968 [when the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia] ... that the Czechoslovaks should show restraint,” he said.
As shown by the contrast between the reactions to the fighting in Georgia from Obama and McCain, the US cannot afford a president who is instinctively and immediately belligerent in every international crisis. Further, McCain is ensnared irretrievably by the lobbyists he's surrounded himself with. Americans can't be sure of knowing what kinds of conflicts of interest lie behind John McCain's pronouncements on both foreign and domestic issues.
The parallel to McCain's problems this week with voters in Wilmington, OH is striking. In his latest visit there, McCain tried to downplay the role that his campaign manager, Rick Davis, had in lobbying for the DHL deal that now threatens to leave tens of thousands unemployed in southern Ohio. Indeed, McCain personally had intervened in the Senate to push the DHL deal through. Yet as Obama manager David Plouffe pointed out, until the Cleveland Plain Dealer this week uncovered Davis' role as a lobbyist for DHL, McCain had tried to keep concerned Ohio voters in the dark about that most basic of facts:
"[John McCain] was there a month ago in this community and was asked a question about this DHL issue and did not say one word about his role in this or the role of his campaign manager. That is the furthest thing from straight talk that we can imagine."
McCain's lobbyist entanglements will keep getting worse as this campaign progresses. They should help to keep him out of the White House, where his lobbyist buddies don't belong.