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Overthrow a Fascist Regime on $15 a Day

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The Firewall Against Bush

You're putting out stuff that is unbelievable, George, and it's got to stop ... I don't know if you can understand this, George, but that really hurt. You should be ashamed. You should be ashamed.

— John McCain to George W. Bush , February 16, 2000.

The experience of working with a then-maverick Republican to deny another Bush residency in the White House was a lesson in "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde politics." Senator John Sidney McCain, Vietnam War prisoner-of-war icon and so-called GOP maverick, radically changed from 2000 to 2007. The McCain of 2007 was nothing more than a sycophantic George W. Bush apologist for all the failed neoconservative policies that dragged the United States into one of the worst military debacles in its history.

However, in the election campaign of 2000, McCain was seen as the only realistic "firewall" to prevent George W. Bush from being anointed as the Republican candidate. For a Bush to claim the nomination is to place him three-quarters of the way to the White House, such is the power that this political family exercises over the American body politic.

Many of the McCain volunteers were dedicated to denying Bush a run for the White House. Some had worked in the H. Ross Perot campaign in 1992, a political movement that almost propelled the Texas billionaire into the White House as the first independent President of the United States. Others recalled the lackluster one-term presidency of George H.W. Bush and his being up to his ears in the Iran-Contra scandal. They wanted no part of another Bush administration. Moderate-to-liberal Republicans, independents, and Democrats all banded together in 2000 to ensure McCain was the GOP candidate. A defeat for George W. Bush would be a defeat for the Bush family — a signal that America was casting a vote of no confidence in the Bushes and everything they stood for — political power, greed, political dirty tricks, intelligence connections, and business fraud.

In 2000, McCain spoke as a person who was out to cleanse Washington, DC of its lobbyists and other power brokers who pushed their agendas through Congress and the White House as returns for large political donations. It was something I had witnessed in my battles during the 1990s with the Clinton administration over the privacy issue.

As much as the right-wing Republicans despised Clinton, he delivered on so many GOP key issues it could be said that he was the one of the best Republican presidents they ever had. On the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Telecommunications Reform Act, the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), and other business-friendly, pro-surveillance and anti-labor policies, Clinton worked with the GOP Congress to sign the pro-Big Business bills into law.

McCain was right in 2000 about the influence of lobbyists on public policy. I had seen it firsthand in my work with the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) in pointing out how the Clinton administration was selling out the privacy interests of the American people to industry lobbyists. I wrote about this duplicity on the part of Clinton in 2000:

Polls now show, more than ever before, that Americans are concerned about personal privacy. Internet surfers are leaving electronic trails of digital data about their buying, travel, reading, and sexual habits that circling bands of direct marketing vultures are eager to pick apart and consume. The Clinton administration walks and talks like born-again privacy advocates. However, when one peers under the rock that the administration claims to be its "progressive" privacy policy, the vermin and other bottom feeders readily become apparent.

One major personal data collector is Acxiom. It is a huge data mining company that has amassed 20 million unlisted consumer phone numbers and routinely sells them to direct marketers. As a personal data reseller, Acxiom combines the phone numbers with other personal data culled from sources like the Internet. The result is an electronic dossier, undreamed of by George Orwell, being available to nosy telemarketers.

Acxiom is headquartered in Conway, Arkansas. After seven years of dealing with various Arkansas swindlers, rubes, and political shysters who descended upon the nation's capital after Clinton's election, one has to be a bit inquisitive about such a firm's link to the administration's policy-making machine.

Founded in 1975, Acxiom now maintains one of the world's largest reservoirs of personal information. Acxiom's chief executive officer is 55-year-old Charles Morgan, a bona fide "Friend of Bill." Shortly after Clinton's election in 1992, Morgan told the Direct Marketing Association's trade periodical DM News that Clinton would be a good friend of the direct marketing industry. He said Clinton "has been a strong supporter of our company and is a very strong proponent of companies like ours, which are information-based, and I would perceive him to be even-handed and rational about our industry." Morgan, who had been appointed to a number of Arkansas state commissions by then-governor Clinton, has advised Clinton on a number of issues relating to the direct marketing industry. None of this advice has been good for the cause of privacy in the United States.

Although Morgan was thankfully not named Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), his advice to Clinton has been extremely apparent. Direct marketing industry self-regulation has been a cornerstone of the Clinton administration, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that this policy does not work. However, the FTC continues to insist that industry can police itself. Their stance is supported by a number of industry shills who have wormed their way into administration positions, including in the White House. Charles Morgan and people like him have been elated over Clinton's laissez-faire attitude on consumer privacy. It is noteworthy that this policy has resulted in threats of a data embargo being imposed by the more privacy-conscious Europeans against the United States. In reaction, the Clinton administration has acted as a virtual lobbyist for the direct marketing industry in blocking Europe's attempts to protect its citizens' personal information from the data vultures in the United States. Taxpayers' money has been used by a traveling band of Commerce Department officials to strong-arm politicians and bureaucrats in Brussels, Berlin, Paris, The Hague, London, Madrid, Lisbon, Helsinki, Rome, and Copenhagen. Their efforts have largely failed.

During the changeover from Bush to Clinton in 1992, the Direct Marketing Association (of which Acxiom has always been a major player) was actually involved with Clinton's presidential transition team. In the lead-up to Clinton's inauguration, the DMA noted Clinton's long association with direct mailing campaigns in Arkansas. It is worthwhile to note that these campaigns included targeting investors with solicitations to invest in retirement properties in places like Whitewater and Castle Grande. After millions of dollars of retirement nest eggs were bilked by Mr. and Mrs. Clinton, they moved to Washington after a successful political campaign that relied heavily on direct marketing.

It is worth judging a policy-maker like Clinton by examining the friends he keeps. In Arkansas, Morgan started a group called the "Good Suit Club," a loose-knit association of business people dedicated to public-private partnerships to better education and jobs growth. Morgan and his friends supported a number of Governor Clinton's initiatives. This was just the kind of group both Clintons favored — a nebulous group supporting an obscure set of principles. The "Good Suiters" must have looked like an Arkansas version of the present "Third Way" club of Clinton, Tony Blair, and Gerhard Schroeder. Morgan's "Good Suits" also included Jackson Stephens, the chairman of Stephens Inc., an investor in Little Rock's Worthen Bank along with the now infamous Riadys of Indonesia. Add to the club Craig T. Smith, who would later become Clinton's White House political director at the height of the Lewinsky scandal. Smith later chaired the Washington-based and direct mail-intensive Gore 2000 campaign until the Vice President moved his headquarters to Nashville in October 1999.

The FTC and Federal Communications Commission have consistently pointed out that Acxiom's compilation and trafficking in unlisted phone numbers is not illegal. Knowing of the close ties between Acxiom and Clinton this should come as no surprise. Moreover, the Acxiom-Clinton connection will be with us for a long time to come. The Little Rock downtown development authorities are currently planning two new additions to the city's vista: a brand new building that will serve as Acxiom's corporate headquarters with the nearby Clinton Presidential Library in its shadow.

Clinton's dubious ties to the direct marketing industry took on even more ominous overtones when retired NATO Commander, General Wesley Clark of Arkansas, who was considered close to the Clintons, was appointed to the board of Acxiom in December 2001, a few months after the 9/11 attacks. Later, Clark lobbied the emerging homeland security infrastructure in the Bush administration for personal data collection contracts. Clark maintained his Acxiom board membership even after he announced his plans to run for the Democratic nomination for president on September 17, 2003. Clark finally left the Acxiom board on October 9, 2003. These developments were just further indications that the Clintons were no friends to the cause of privacy and individual rights.

The "Straight Talk" Express

In retrospect, something was radically wrong with the McCain "insurgency." McCain 2000 had all the telltale signs of a rump campaign designed to give Bush a good run but not endanger the political scion. As I wrote for CounterPunch on February 19, 2004, the McCain "Straight Talk" campaign was doomed from the start:

I witnessed the futility of using highly compensated political mercenaries with the McCain campaign, for which I volunteered in 2000. Many of McCain's paid staffers were long-time Republican National Committee insiders who were still chumming it up with their old friends who also happened to be working for Bush. How many campaign strategies and secrets were passed on to the Bush campaign over drinks at Washington's Congressional Club (right next door to the Republican National Committee) is anyone's guess, but the effect on the McCain campaign was disastrous. ... McCain surrounded himself with the pros and rarely listened to the volunteers. McCain's insurgency campaign collapsed and, to make matters worse, a few years later he became a virtual cheerleader for the Bush neocon platform and its worldwide hegemonic agenda.

John McCain scored an impressive 16-point victory over George W. Bush in the New Hampshire Republican primary on February 1, 2000 and stood a good chance of denying the Bush family the keys to the White House. Although it seems unbelievable in retrospect, McCain constantly spoke of Bush cronies and "dirty money" as being the driving forces behind the prodigal son's presidential campaign.

Bush's South Carolina campaign, including political dirty tricks such as push polling and the media propaganda operations of Karl Rove and a band of wealthy fundamentalist Christian and business groups, in addition to long-serving South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, ensured that Bush would trump McCain in the February 19 South Carolina primary. As I wrote on November 1, 2002 in CounterPunch,

Rove's operation proceeded to target McCain with false stories — McCain was a stoolie for his captors in the Hanoi Hilton (this from a lunatic self-promoting Vietnam "veteran"); McCain fathered a black daughter out of wedlock (a despicable reference to McCain's adopted Bangladeshi daughter); Cindy McCain's drug "abuse"; and even McCain's "homosexuality."

After Bush beat McCain 53 to 42 percent in South Carolina, all eyes landed on Michigan and another key Southern state, Virginia. In Michigan's February 22 primary, McCain turned the tables on Bush, beating him 51 to 43 percent and winning 52 of 58 delegates. McCain also swept all 30 delegates in his home state of Arizona. Although Rove, Michigan Governor John Engler, and televangelist tycoon Pat Robertson attempted to engage in South Carolina-style smear tactics against McCain in Michigan, tactics that would become known as "Swiftboating" in the 2004 campaign against Senator John Kerry, McCain was poised to trump Bush.

Virginia became an important state in the primary race. With its 56 delegates up for grabs in the winner-take-all state, Virginia was a must-win for McCain to keep his momentum going. The Bush camp knew the stakes too. It marshaled all its Christian fundie resources — from Pat Robertson's headquarters in Virginia Beach, to Jerry Falwell's seat of power in Lynchburg, to the deep-pocketed Christian Fellowship mansion in Arlington — in order to ensure a win for Bush. Oddly, up until his win in New Hampshire, McCain did not even have a state campaign operation in Virginia, even though his national campaign headquarters was located in Alexandria. The McCain advisers totally wrote off southwest Virginia where no one was assigned as campaign coordinator in Roanoke, an area that was very receptive to McCain.

Rather than using volunteers in Virginia to gather the required signatures to get on the primary ballot, McCain's professional political staff opted to use a professional petition firm. The firm used was the same one McCain's paid advisers opted to use in gathering signatures in South Carolina, another state where volunteers stood ready to gather signatures for the Arizona Republican. It was yet another example of the chasm between paid political hacks and more committed volunteers.

After his February 1 primary win in New Hampshire, McCain set up a Virginia primary campaign just weeks away from the important February 29 primary. Named as Virginia chair of the McCain campaign was Paul Galanti, McCain's fellow prisoner of war in Hanoi. The selection of Galanti, who set up shop in Richmond, would be a fateful choice for McCain.

Ron Fisher, a fellow Naval Academy Class of 1958 pal of McCain, who helped the would-be President pass his academy electrical engineering course, formed, on a shoestring budget, the Northern Virginia McCain headquarters in rented office space in the Washington, DC suburb of Falls Church. Recognizing that if McCain bested Bush in Virginia, the Bush campaign would be dealt a deadly body blow, I contacted Ron and volunteered my services. It was apparent from the start that Fisher's Northern Virginia efforts had no support from either Galanti's group in Richmond or the national McCain campaign headquarters in Alexandria headed by two professional political insiders, Rick Davis and John Weaver. Davis was McCain's campaign manager and Weaver, a former colleague of Karl Rove, was top strategist.

From the outset, the individuals who surrounded McCain appeared more interested in currying favor with those around George W. Bush than in getting their man elected. McCain campaign signs were so hard to come by in Virginia that Fisher bought $7000 in signs with local funds collected from contributions. The same signs available in nearby Alexandria were not made available to the critical northern Virginia campaign.

To make matters worse, the national McCain headquarters actually tried to shut down the northern Virginia headquarters, which was attracting moderate Republican, independent, and Democratic volunteers. Shortly after setting up the northern Virginia headquarters, Fisher heard from hundreds of people in Iowa, the earliest caucus state, volunteering to help McCain in that state. McCain's political advisers decided to sit out the Iowa caucuses, handing the state's delegates on a silver platter to Bush.

As the February 29 Virginia primary election drew nearer, the organization at McCain's Alexandria and Richmond operations became more incompetent. One day, an older man strolled into the Alexandria headquarters and offered his services to the campaign. The receptionist, the daughter of one of McCain's Naval Academy buddies, smiled and took the man's card. She told him the campaign would get back to him. Weeks went by before someone noticed the man's card on the desk. It was that of Melvin Laird, the Secretary of Defense under Richard Nixon.

Things went much differently at the northern Virginia headquarters. When he arrived to make volunteer phone calls, everyone recognized Ronald Reagan's National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane. The northern Virginia headquarters also received a call from Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, a McCain supporter. Hagel wanted a McCain yard sign. He could not get one from McCain's national headquarters. The northern Virginia headquarters delivered Hagel a sign that had to be paid for from local funds.

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Excerpted from Overthrow a Fascist Regime on $15 a Day by Wayne Madsen. Copyright © 2008 Wayne Madsen. Excerpted by permission of Trine Day LLC.
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