- Amy Silverman knows her subject. She writes,
-
- I've been a writer and editor at [the Phoenix] New Times
for 15 years. For much of that time, I wrote about Arizona politics, which
is to say that I wrote about John McCain. It's still odd to see the guy
in the spotlight, because for quite a while, I was pretty much the only
one covering him. I never did fall for him in the way reporters fall for
politicians, probably because he wasn't much to fall for back in the early
1990s. In those days, McCain was still rehabilitating the image he'd later
sell to the national media. He was known then for cavorting in the Bahamas
with Charlie Keating, rather than for fighting for campaign finance reform
and limited government spending.
-
- Silverman has written an excellent compendium of all
things McCain. Think of it as McCain 101 -- a primer for pulling information
about Grumpy McBush to dazzle your friends and befuddle your enemies (not
to mention phone banking and such). I'll share some material from the story
below the fold, but you should http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2008-08-07/news/postmodern-mccain-the-
- john-mccain-some-arizonans-know-and-loathe/%20/2
- definitely read the entire thing. It's a big one; pack
a lunch.
-
- (Note: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/7/163732/6435
- AxmxZ did a much shorter diary on this article yesterday,
though I didn't see it until after writing my own. He deserves some recognition.)
-
- Let's do it in timeline format, kinda like we do it at
the <http://www.historycommons.org/>History Commons:.
-
- 1982: McCain, recently remarried to Arizona beer heiress
Cindy Hensley, moves to Phoenix and wins a seat in the US House. He quickly
forges a relationship with the Democratic House eminence from Tucson, Mo
Udall, who although a strong progressive, has always welcomed the opportunity
to work with Republicans.
-
- 1982-88: McCain takes over $100,000 in contributions
from our well-remembered buddy from Lincoln S&L, Charles Keating, and
his employees. McCain and Keating are very close, with McCain frequently
joining Keating on outings to the Bahamas, on Keating's dime. Keating also
has what Silverman calls a "business relationship" with Jim Hensley,
Cindy Hensley's father, and with Cindy as well.
-
- 1986: During McCain's race for the Senate, Arizona Democrats
ask the Udall staffers not to allow McCain to cling too closely to Udall,
worrying that McCain is using Udall as a campaign tool. Udall aide Bob
Neuman later says he tries to be subtle, but when McCain figures out what
Neuman wants, he bawls Neuman out using words the aide refuses to repeat.
Neuman later says McCain was so extreme in his reaction that, as Silverman
writes, he thought "there was something really wrong with the guy."
McCain is running for Barry Goldwater's seat, with Goldwater's endorsement.
But after the Keating scandal, Goldwater loses much of his respect for
McCain, and, Silverman writes, "soon found he had to stop McCain from
using his good name."
-
- 1986: McCain jokes to an audience from the National League
of Cities and Towns, asking if they've heard "the one about the woman
who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly,
and left to die?" The punch line: "When she finally regains consciousness
and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and
to feebly ask, 'Where is that marvelous ape?'" Neuman later says,
"John McCain is the Eddie Haskell of politics. You can attribute that
to me, and he'll kill me for it."
-
- 1987-1988: McCain battles against campaign finance reform,
in part on behalf of his pal Keating.
-
- April 12, 1988: Governor Evan Mecham (R-Lunatic) has
just been impeached, and Democrat Rose Mofford, the Secretary of State,
takes over the position. Mofford, a kindly lady with an astonishing snow-white
beehive bouffant, is as non-partisan as one can be and still belong to
a political party, gracious and well-liked by just about everyone in the
state government. But not by McCain and some of his buds. (Disclaimer:
Mrs. Max, who describes herself as either a Goldwater Republican or a Reagan
Democrat depending on the day of the week, knows Mofford, and likes her
tremendously.) McCain and his pals want to eject Mofford using the same
recall process that was launched to yank Mecham. Eight days into her tenure,
Mofford goes to DC to take part in what one aide later calls the "perfunctory
wet kiss" meeting with the Arizona congressional delegation. The meeting
is strictly ceremonial, or so most people think. Mofford is quite conversant
with her duties as secretary of state, primarily the elections department.
She doesn't know a great deal about the Central Arizona Project (CAP) or
the technical details of water provision in that dry state. And in eight
days, she hasn't been able to learn a hell of a lot. She speaks before
the Senate Energy and Water Subcommittee on Appropriations about CAP. McCain
is not a member of that committee, but his Republican buddy from Idaho,
James McClure, is. McClure asks Mofford, in Silverman's words,
-
- a series of questions that would leave any water expert's
mouth dry. Her staff jumped in to try to answer, but even so, ultimately
they had to file an addendum to the testimony.
-
- Sandbagged. The publisher of the Arizona Republic, Pat
Murphy, who considers himself a friend of McCain's, is "crushed"
by the incident. It is, Silverman writes, "the beginning of the end
of his respect for and friendship with McCain." During lunch, a "mischievously
glee[ful]" McCain brags about his setup of Mofford. As Murphy recalls,
"he had slipped some highly technical questions to [McClure] to ask
Mofford--questions she wouldn't be prepared to answer or expected to answer.
Flabbergasted, I asked McCain why would he want to sabotage Mofford's testimony,
when in fact the CAP was the nonpartisan pet of Republicans and Democrats--such
as far-left Udall and far-right Goldwater--since its inception. His reply,
as near as I remember, was, 'I'll embarrass a Democrat any time I get the
chance.'" Murphy accompanies McCain back to his office, where reporters
ask about a rumor that McCain had tried to sabotage Mofford's testimony.
Murphy is floored to hear him answer, in classic straight-talk fashion,
"I'd never do anything like that." Murphy later learns that McCain
had even brought in a private film crew to film the testimony for use in
embarrassing Moffatt in the recall election. The Arizona Supreme Court
strikes down the recall effort, so McCain's gamesmanship did little except
destroy his friendship with Murphy and embitter Mofford. While she doesn't
talk much about the McCains, having known Cindy since she was little, she
will tell Silverman, the CAP hearing, "hurt me more than anything
... to be set up like that." She also says that McCain is "certainly
no Barry Goldwater or Mo Udall."
-
- Late 1980s: McCain hosts an event ostensibly to honor
Goldwater, but in reality to raise funds for his Senate campaign. Goldwater
initially refuses to participate and tells McCain to give half of the proceeds
to the Arizona Republican Party. McCain retools the event to honor Reagan
instead. Goldwater does speak at the event, but later writes to McCain,
"You will recall during my speech at the dinner for the president
in Phoenix, I announced that you were going to give half of the funds you
raised to the State Republican Party. I am told by the Party, that you
still owe them $35,000, and unless you pay all of it, or most of it, they
cannot meet their payroll next Wednesday." McCain will continue to
use Goldwater, a legend in Arizona politics, as well as Udall as a campaign
touchstone for himself.
-
- 1990: Facing criticism over his relationship with Keating
and an upcoming re-election battle, McCain flip-flops and becomes a proponent
of campaign finance reform and reducing government spending. Silverman
calls McCain's efforts "a farce. McCain famously sponsored a law designed
to control special interests' grip on Washington, but at the same time,
he took money from those interests." She adds details and links that
I won't go into here, but her summation of his efforts: "sadly cosmetic."
What he has done is take such a shrill stance against certain types of
earmarks--pork, in the vernacular--that Arizona has lost out on federal
funding for, among other worthy projects, a program at a Scottsdale hospital
that trains military medical personnel in trauma care. Some of that training
has been used in Iraq and Afghanistan, for those who were lucky enough
to receive it before the program lost much of its funding. Silverman notes:
-
- Arizona's political forefathers--Mo Udall, Barry Goldwater,
Carl Hayden - pushed through one of the biggest pork barrel projects in
the history of the United States Congress: the Central Arizona [Water]
Project. If they hadn't, there wouldn't be much of a state to represent.
As a native Arizonan, those are the politicians I grew up learning about.
McCain just doesn't compare.
-
- 1991 and After: When Udall leaves Congress, McCain, who
had voted with Udall on some environmental issues, quits supporting those
issues, and begins to rack up low marks from environmental groups. One
of his most recent is a zero from the League of Conservation Voters. He
has refused to oppose efforts to mine uranium from sites perilously near
the Grand Canyon, and refuses to support proposed changes to the Mining
Act of 1872, oblivious to the fact that Arizona is a testament to the environmental
degradation that comes with strip mining and other practices. He is well
remembered for threatening the job of a Forest Service official who disagreed
with him on the topic of the endangered Mount Graham red squirrel. However,
in campaign appearances, McCain regularly invokes the name and environmental
passion of Udall. In April 2008, Newsweek writes, "He traces his environmental
awareness to the sainted Rep. Mo Udall, an Arizona Democrat who took McCain
as a young congressman under his tutelage ... To environmentalists, that's
like saying you learned about civil rights by driving around Alabama with
Martin Luther King Jr." It's doubtful that Newsweek bothered to find
much on the other side of the story.
-
- Spring 1994: Silverman begins hearing rumors of Cindy
McCain's addiction to prescription drugs. She learns of Tom Gosinski, who
had been fired from his position as director of government and international
affairs for Cindy McCain's nonprofit charity, the American Voluntary Medical
Team (AVMT), which provides medical relief to poor countries. Gosinski
had gone to the DEA and told them that Cindy McCain was using an AVMT doctor
to illegally prescribe her drugs in her employees' names. Gosinski was
one of those employees, and he was worried that he might be culpable. Cindy
McCain had had numerous prescriptions written for her, some with as many
as 500 pills on a single refill. Dr. John Max Johnson, her AVMT drug connection,
told the DEA that she kept them in her personal luggage. Gosinski had not
just ratted her out, but filed a wrongful-termination suit against the
charity. That alerted John McCain's lawyer, John Dowd, to the situation.
Dowd charged Gosinski with extortion. The extortion investigation produded
public records that Silverman finds and uses for her reporting. But the
McCains learn of her records request, and try to inoculate themselves against
her reports, acknowledging Cindy's prescription drug addictions and blaming
it on her back surgeries and the stress from the Keating scandal. They
also claim, falsely, that Gosinski is trying to blackmail them. In her
September 8, 1994 story, Silverman prints the following excerpt from Gosinski's
personal journal, an entry from July 1992: "I have always wondered
why John McCain has done nothing to fix the problem. He must either not
see that a problem exists or does not choose to do anything about it. It
would seem that it would be in everyone's best interest to come to terms
with the situation. And do whatever is necessary to fix it. There is so
much at risk ... During my short tenure at AVMT, I have been surrounded
by what on the surface appears to be the ultimate all-American family.
In reality, I am working for a very sad, lonely woman whose marriage of
convenience to a U.S. Senator has driven her to: distance herself from
friends; cover feelings of despair with drugs; and replace lonely moments
with self-indulgences." Cindy avoids criminal charges by going into
a drug rehab program.
-
- 1997: McCain is a frequent and steady visitor to Mo Udall,
who is slowly dying of Parkinson's disease. Neuman is pleased with McCain's
loyalty, but he is stunned when McCain brings reporter Michael Lewis with
him to Udall's hospital bedside. (McCain is unable to wake Udall during
the visit. Udall will die in 1998.) Neuman later recalls, "That was
devastating to me, that he brought in a reporter. I thought that was crossing
the line, and it destroyed me." Silverman writes, "I'm sure I
would have accepted the offer to go the hospital, as well. I can't blame
Lewis, but maybe the sight of the legendary Mo Udall in his final, sad
days wasn't McCain's to share."
-
- 2000: As the presidential primaries heat up, Silverman
flies to Washington to be interviewed by 20/20's Sam Donaldson on McCain.
After the interview, Donaldson decides he doesn't want to report anything
negative about McCain, and cans the interview. The same thing happens when
she helps put together background research for 60 Minutes, when Mike Wallace
decides he wants to do a positive story on McCain.
-
- Whee doggies. And there's plenty more in the article:
this is just the highlights. Even better, there are links to other New
Times stories on McCain. So get to reading, and share the wealth.
-
- Update: Amy Silverman writes in that an entire compendium
of New Times links to stories about John McCain can be found on the Vintage
McCain page on the newspaper's web site.
-
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- http://black-max.dailykos.com
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