Josh notes that, before opting for just-resigned lobbyist Doug Goodyear, John McCain initially wanted Paul Manafort to run the 2008 Republican National Convention. Manafort was passed over, ironically enough, thanks to his lobbying ties with foreign governments. Which governments? Newsweek cites those of Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos and former Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich. Which is particularly interesting in light of this post by Matt Yglesias:
That's what made McCain's decision to fire a couple of people for being too cosy with SLORC so odd -- now everyone else is going to get scrutinized. And here's a bunch of scrutiny.
It seems that Charlie Black, for example, has done work for Mobuto Sese
Seko, Siad Barre, and Ferdinand Marcos, among others. There's also some
stuff (less damning, in my view) Peter Madigan and Kevin Fay in there.
And I assume that when eager-beaver oppo researchers have some more
time to dig, they'll come up with more stuff. And of course given that
McCain has put a hazy, militaristic vision
of going bigger than "war on terror" to some kind of vaguely defined
quest to stamp out all dictatorships everywhere, it's hard for him to
say this kind of thing is all in the game.
--Christopher Orr