McCain: Campaign worries, Cindy's $$

Posted: Wednesday, July 02, 2008 9:31 AM by Domenico Montanaro

The Politico: “Four months have passed since John McCain effectively captured the party nomination, and the insiders are getting restless. Top GOP officials, frustrated by what they view as inconsistent messaging, sluggish fundraising and an organization that is too slow to take shape, are growing increasingly uneasy about the direction of the McCain presidential campaign. While the practice of second-guessing presidential campaign decisions is a quadrennial routine, interviews with 16 Republican strategists and state party chairmen -- few of whom would agree to talk on the record -- reveal a striking level of discord and mounting criticism about the McCain operation.

Another Politico piece also reports that Cindy McCain’s wealth is both an asset and liability for the McCain campaign. “Already, Democrats have blasted Cindy McCain’s less-than-full financial disclosure, asserting that it calls into question John McCain’s commitment to transparency and suggests that he may be ‘hiding’ information about how his efforts in Congress benefited his family.

“While Cindy McCain, her dependent children and the trusts and companies they control made as much as $29 million -- and likely substantially more -- from her family’s business interests from 2004 through last year, data from the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Senate, U.S. Office of Government Ethics and the Center for Responsive Politics also reveals that they spent $11 million purchasing five condominiums for the family, hired additional household help and racked up progressively larger credit cards bills almost every year. Their credit card bills peaked between January 2007 and May 2008, during which time Cindy McCain charged as much as $500,000 in a single month on one American Express card and $250,000 on another, while one of their two dependent children had an AmEx card with a monthly balance as large as $50,000.”    

McCain “stepped up his criticism of Mr. Obama over remarks made on Monday by Wesley K. Clark, the retired general and Obama military adviser, who said he did not think that Mr. McCain’s experience being shot down as a naval aviator in Vietnam was ‘a qualification to be president.’ General Clark stood by his remarks on Tuesday,” the New York Times writes.

“Mr. McCain responded, ‘I think it’s up to Senator Obama now to not only repudiate him, but to cut him loose.’”  

The liberal Huffington Post digs up some news to dampen McCain’s Colombia trip. The co-host of a recent top-dollar fundraiser for Sen. John McCain oversaw the payment of roughly $1.7 million to a Colombian paramilitary group that is today designated a terrorist organization by the United States. Carl H. Lindner Jr., the billionaire Cincinnati businessman, was CEO of Chiquita Brands International from 1984 to 2001, and remained on the company's board of directors until May 2002. Beginning under his tenure, Chiquita executives paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (known by the Spanish acronym AUC), which is described by George Washington University's National Security Archive as an ‘illegal right-wing anti-guerrilla group tied to many of the country's most notorious civilian massacres.’”

The New Republic’s Noam Scheiber doubts that the GOP attempts to paint Obama as a “typical” politician will work. “For one thing, Obama is young and black and exceptionally thoughtful and eloquent. He could spend every day between now and the election executing plays from the ‘typical pol’ playbook (not a very interesting read, I assure you) and still look far from typical on November 4. Likewise, it's going to be exceedingly difficult for McCain to fend off the taint of typicalness himself.”

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