Beyond the Dome

One of the biggest mysteries about John McCain, the man who claims to be the enemy of powerful lobbyists and special interests, is why he has surrounded himself with lobbyists and former lobbyists on his campaign team.

The latest adviser who’s causing headaches for McCain is foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann, whose lobbying firm has represented the Georgian government, raising questions about how neutral a broker McCain can be in the crisis caused by Russia’s invasion. Why would McCain put himself in this position, given that his political identity is shaped largely by his battles for higher ethical standards in Washington?

The answer, when you look back over his entire Senate career, seems to be that McCain was mainly bothered by lobbyists who frustrated his own goals. He doesn’t seem to have any problem with lobbyists who share his goals.

One of the lesser-known episodes that led to McCain’s push to overhaul the campaign finance system — besides his frustrations as a member of the Keating Five in the late 1980s — was his view of the rewrite of telecommunications rules in 1996. McCain wanted a bill that would have gone much farther in deregulating the entire industry. But he couldn’t get the Senate to go along, and he was convinced that the reason was all the lobbyists who wanted to protect their own slices of the industry.

“Why is it that every time I talk to someone in this industry — and there are many — they say, ‘I am in favor of total deregulation, but… .’ There is always a ‘but,’ ” McCain said in a Senate floor speech in June 1995. “And guess what? They have to have some kind of special dispensation for their industry to make sure that they have a level playing field.”

So McCain went to work trying to reduce the influence of money in politics, and he and Democrat Russ Feingold of Wisconsin got the campaign finance overhaul signed into law in 2002 — the signature accomplishment of McCain’s career.

But it turns out that many of the people in McCain’s orbit have lobbying backgrounds, which is why so many ended up on the campaign team. It’s not just Scheunemann, but campaign manager Rick Davis, senior adviser Charlie Black, deputy campaign manager Christian Ferry, congressional liaison John Green, senior policy adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer, etc.

None of these people are standing in McCain’s way now, of course — they’re helping him get elected. But they sure muddy his message of being a crusader against special interests. And on the ethics front, McCain himself used recognize that after the Keating episode, he has less room to make mistakes.

In an interview with CQ 10 years ago, as he fought for campaign finance and tobacco legislation, McCain put it this way: “The penalty is double when you stumble again.” Exactly.