MoveOn's McCain-Black attack
Posted: Friday, May 16, 2008 2:55 PM by Domenico Montanaro
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From NBC/NJ’s Carrie Dann
With a busy news morning, the McCain campaign is swatting out responses to enough dust-ups to fill a vacuum cleaner bag. But here's one of the latest…
MoveOn.org is out with a new web video that calls on McCain to fire top advisor Charlie Black, whose lobbying deals it links to a series of rogue leaders. The ad features haunting black-and-white photos of the consequences of the regimes of Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines and Mobuto Sese Seko of Zaire, both heads of governments that Black's lobbying firm once represented. (Black stepped down from his role at firm BKSH & Associates in March of 2008 to serve McCain's campaign full-time.)
A spokesman for the GOP called the MoveOn ad an "outrageous personal smear job" and blamed the Democratic Party's likely new standard-bearer for failing to control its foot soldiers.
"Barack Obama's failure to stop his closest supporters from running these kinds of attacks is evidence of his weak leadership and undermines everything his campaign is supposed to be about," RNC spokesman Alex Conant said.
Obama spokesman Hari Sevugan responded to that. "John McCain's failure to stop his closest advisors from advocating on behalf of some of the most corrupt governments, dictators and tyrants in the world is evidence of his failed judgment and his inability to change the way Washington works and bring the change we need," he said.
As an online ad, the MoveOn video doesn't represent a major investment of the group's resources. But it's hard to imagine that the issue of conflicts of interest within the senator's campaign won't continue to come up at the hands of Democratic operatives, as they transition into the general election. Three prominent McCain aides have left their official positions in the campaign since last weekend under scrutiny about potential conflicts of interest.
Yesterday, in an effort to burnish the campaign's image, McCain Campaign Manager Rick Davis mandated a re-vetting of the senator's campaign staff. The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder and Politico's Ben Smith reported the new policy will require that no aides may be registered lobbyists or foreign agents, and that no one with a "title or position" within the campaign can participate in a 527 organization.
