All McCain's Men

by publius

I don’t have time today to give this story the attention it deserves, but I’d encourage everyone to go check out Lindsay Beyerstein’s exclusive scoop on Randy Scheunemann, McCain foreign policy advisor. (Bloggers can be reporters too!)

The gist of it is that Scheunemann has an enormous conflict of interest because of his ties with lobbyists and their oil clients. Specifically, Scheunemann has extensive ties with a company called WSE, which is run by Stephen Payne -- who you may remember from such famous recent news events as “selling access in exchange for Bush Library donations.” Anyway, as Beyerstein explains, WSE’s business model is about using their clout to obtain oil and gas rights in "politically complicated" and "often misunderstood" countries (i.e., obtaining oil from dictators and/or scumbags).

What’s interesting though is that Scheunemann – again, McCain’s top foreign policy advisor – is held out by WSE as an example of the type of influence their team has. And Exhibit A is Iraq:

Some of the team’s strongest relationships are in Iraq. Randy Scheunemann was a key player in the U.S. involvement in the Iraq war through his role as the President of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq where he coordinated the White House’s “Outside the Government” public relations campaign on Iraq while administering relationships with key Iraqi leaders in exile. Randy’s work with the then-exiled Iraqis developed close relationships with many elements of the elected Iraqi leadership. The team has also worked very closely with leaders of the Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish parties. Additionally, Stephen Payne has been to Iraq 3 times.

Anyway, go check out Majikthise for the whole thing. It’s clearly not as important as magazine cartoons, but maybe the press could pick up on the fact that McCain’s top foreign policy advisor has an 800 lb. conflict of interest.

(Yglesias has more).

Comments

[Model 62]

Maybe while they're at it, the press could pick up on the fact that McCain's Foreign Policy Team are the same cats who led the Agitation Brigade during the runup to the Invasion of Iraq.

[cleek]

since the trend these days is to reject lobbyist influence and conflicts of interest, McCain is, once again, showing his Mavricitude by rejecting the standard approach.

[togolosh]

Are there *any* senior McCain advisers with no major conflicts of interest?

The thing about being all mavericky and stuff is that he's the primo catch for someone who wants to peddle influence, since he brings credibility to the enterprises he's associated with, along with insulation against charges of corruption. That makes him flypaper for people looking to sell connections, and the sale of connections is what K street is all about.

[Aubrey]

It's amazing how they aren't even subtle about it. A person with even a shred of decency- even having the minimal amount of amount respect for our government- would be cognizant of how this looks. Forget whether or not this is wrong. You'd think they'd ask themselves "Might this look unseemly?"

[Jack]

Its kind of sad. 8 years ago, I had a lot of respect for McCain, although I didn't agree much with his policies. Now, I'm not sure if he merely went to the Dark Side to get elected, or if his being "off kilter" enabled the Neocon and lobbyist stooges to hijack his brain and his soul. Maybe both.

[Jeff]

Another fun fact for the Mccain apologists, the day after Anhueser-Busch was sold to a Belgian company, McCain went to St Loius to tell the workers there why they should work for him (and Cindy came to pick up her check).

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Thanks, publius!