John McCain and His Buddies in the Defense Industry
Sam Stein wrote an article for the Huffington Post in which he claims that Senator and Republican candidate for the presidency John McCain may have decided to support “a $35 billion Pentagon contract for a European plane maker…” because the firm was willing to donate a large sum of money to his campaign.
According to Stein, “McCain, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, played a crucial role in blocking the deal to build air tankers from going to U.S.-based Boeing, instead paving the path for EADS to score the loot.” When talking about it, he “framed his decision as an example of political integrity; Boeing has previously been exposed of contract abuse.” Sadly, however, “a review of campaign finance donations and lobbying records suggests that money and personal lobbying may have also been in play.”
Here are the facts as given by the Huffington Post author (keep in mind that the HuffPo isn’t exactly a non-partisan blog):
On January 15, 2007, McCain appeared at Alabama Gov. Bob Riley’s gubernatorial swearing in ceremony and formally called for multiple bidders in the tanker deal. The push for an open process had only one true beneficiary, however, and that was the Northrop Grumman/EADS consortium, which was poised to be Boeing’s sole competitor.
A day after McCain made his proclamation, the contributions began to flow. John Green, a lobbyist for EADS donated $2,100 to the senator’s presidential campaign. Ten days after that, Michelle Lammers, the “Chief of Staff” for EADS North America, gave $250 to the McCain campaign. It was her first political contribution ever. Less than a month later, the long-time head of EADS’ government affairs program, Samuel Adcock, made a $2,100 donation to McCain. And eleven days later, Ralph Crosby, the head of EADS North America, donated $2,300 himself.
All in all, “McCain received more than $15,000 from EADS and its subsidiary, Airbus North America. Not only was this the highest amount received by any federal candidate, but prior to 2006, not a single employee from EADS had ever contributed to McCain. Two Airbus employees did donate nearly $4,000 for his 2000 run at the White House.”
Stein then quotes some people as saying that this does indeed look bad, and so on.
Of course, McCain’s defense is quite simple: does anyone believe he would push this through for a meager $15,000?
Well, perhaps so, yes. Remember; McCain needs all the money he can get. He hasn’t exactly proven to be a heck of a fundraiser during this election cycle.
What’s more, there’s more to this than money: “According to an Associated Press report published on Tuesday, the McCain campaign currently employs individuals who just last year were lobbying on behalf of EADS.” O, and it has to be kept in mind that “[p]arts for the refueling tankers are slated to be built in Mobile, Alabama.” Days after the deal was finalized… Alabama’s Governor Bob Riley endorsed McCain.
So, do we smell something fishy here? Or a coincidence? And, if not, does it matter… much?
I think that this is simply how American politics work, but McCain is someone who criticizes exactly that kind of behavior. As such, he should be held to a higher standard than other politicians, as should someone like Barack Obama.
He presents himself as a ‘reformer‘ after all. And reformers should lead by… example.
Me thinks that we’ll hear more stuff like this about all both nominees in the coming months, all indicating basically one thing: they’re a bunch of hypocrites.
And, well, I think they are. McCain is as well.
As I wrote in the thread about Obama saying that he’s an agent of change, I personally hold both men accountable for their claims of change/reform, but I won’t hold them to an impossibly high standard. I’ll continue to read and get more details on this particular deal, but from what I see so far it doesn’t seem that there’s evidence that McCain changed from what he actually believed was the correct policy here because of lobbying or promises of quid pro quo. He was correct IMO to push for competitive bidding because Boeing DOES have a history of bilking the taxpayers (and it’s rather funny that the same people who cry about Halliburton getting no bid contracts now take the opposite position, isn’t it?) If anything, it sounds a bit like the Riley endorsement could have been a quid pro quo- perhaps Riley had asked McCain to get involved in this. But the money from EADS does sound like standard operating procedure- where those who stand to benefit from a particular politician’s votes will obviously tend to donate to that candidate.
Here’s where that gets a bit complicated: as I said above, it’s SOP for donations to follow the person who votes the way the company or SIG wants to see the votes go. The question is, does that mean that the politician is then beholden to them? I think to answer that, you have to look at a pattern- is the person ALWAYS voting the way that company or SIG wants him to, or does it sometimes go the other way? Are the votes (and the reasons that the politician gives for them) consistent with his philosophy, or not? In McCain’s case, when the NYT insinuated that he may have been giving favors because of a relationship with a lobbyist, for example, those who actually bothered to look at the details saw that he often WASN’T voting the way the group represented by the lobbyist wanted him to- and when he did intervene, it was (IMO) in an appropriate way. One of McCain’s frequent laments is that the system as it currently exists leads to too much appearance of impropriety. I think he legitimately feels that he’s in an impossible situation- because he can’t exactly refuse to take money from anyone or refuse to meet with lobbyists, but anytime those transactions or relationships occur he’s put under scrutiny to see if there was inappropriate influence. He’s right about this- it is impossible to avoid appearance of impropriety, because the only possible way to do that would be to always vote AGAINST the interest of anyone who supports you or lobbies you, and obviously a politician couldn’t survive that way.
I don’t actually agree with that at all- that’s just saying that there should be a double standard. Instead, I do feel that supporters should hold the candidates to a standard simply because they’ve presumably been drawn to that candidate because of the promises he/she is making, and thus intellectual honesty would require that we see if they are walking the walk as well as talking the talk. But I don’t agree that this should represent a higher standard than we’d apply to other candidates.
I absolutely love this.
Why don’t we get to the bottom of the Boeing deal?An Air Force official inflated the 10 year lease price for the tankers to an amount that exceeded the purchase price for the tankers. Coincidentally, she left to work for Boeing soon after the contract was finalized. Long story short, the Air Force official went to Federal prison. The CFO of Boeing went to Federal prison. The CEO of Boeing resigned. Boeing paid a 615 million dollar fine. John McCain was instrumental in bringing this fraud out in the open, but now people question his credibility. All EADS got was the ability, along with Boeing, to bid on a fair and open contract. If we are supposed to deride McCain for his actions and defend Boeing; then I really have lost all faith in the people of this Country. Here is the Boeing fraud story:
<a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/01/04/60II/main664652.shtml/"> Cashing In For Profit?</a>
Thanks, cf….I knew about some of that but wasn’t even aware of the extent of the Boeing scandal. Truly unbelievable, isn’t it? Talk about partisan spin- again, from many of the same people who pop arteries every time Halliburton is mentioned.
Would be interesting to see who’s donor lists contain Boeing officials, now, wouldn’t it?