In politics the skeletons in the closet frequently come back to life, or at the very least rattle loudly, and one Republican skeleton that has come back into the limelight recently is Rick Davis, a crony of Paul Manafort and a mainstay of John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign. Steve Schmidt, also an integral figure in the campaign, points out that Davis worked to destabilize the young democracy of Ukraine and that he did so with impunity. In fact, he’s even on the board of the McCain Foundation. Schmidt characterizes this state of affairs as a “disaster” and “grotesque” in an interview with the Kyiv Post.
The interview is extensive but the main takeaway is that Russia has worked for decades now to gain control of the Republican party. We didn’t just wake up one day with Tucker Carlson spewing Kremlin talking points and Donald Trump asking Russia to go after Hillary Clinton’s emails.
We are doomed, and I mean f***ing doomed. And I mean really f***ing doomed if we cannot move beyond the attention span of a gerbil. There is no follow-up and people do not think properly. It literally could be our downfall.
We are painfully aware of how utterly botched and corrupt Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign was. Unfortunately, it looks like the blueprint for that was drawn by the 2008 McCain campaign and a lot of the same players were present for both.
McCain met with Deripaska a number of times, internationally, in meetings organized by [political consultant] Rick Gates.
If you want to understand Davis, just read Lord of the Flies and understand it is a perfect metaphor for the Trump campaign, too. Completely disorganized.
– Do you think McCain knew that some of his people were tied to Russia?
Yes, McCain understood this. This was the issue during the McCain 2008 leadership campaign between Rick Davis and [campaign strategist] John Weaver. It was on this issue that there were sparks flying. Literally, like almost fist fights.
In the Spring of 2007, I was in DC and the campaign was functionally bankrupt by December. You might ask why that was.
– Why was that?
Well, Rick Davis and his colleague Paul Manafort set up a company through which everything for the McCain presidential campaign had to be procured. It was impossible to do anything unless it went through their net. They demanded to add their percent to every single purpose as they cared more about making money than about winning. It didn’t matter if it was pens, coffee or banners: They wanted their cut.
I mean, in normal campaigns you go down to the local hotel and take the free sugar and coffees in the lobby – but no, they wanted to make money first and foremost. [Laughter]
We once had a meeting in Aspen, Colorado. At the end of the meeting, I said “Guys, how come you don’t have a Vice Presidential candidate yet?” They had no answers – just inexplicably bad management. And that is how [former Alaska Governor] Sarah Palin came to be the Vice Presidential candidate.
Either way, the U.S. needs to wake up to the malevolent influence of Russia in our politics.
Schmidt goes on to point out the vulnerability of young democracies, noting that 19th century American democracy was an extremely corrupt time politically. Indeed it was. The wide open west, the rule of the gun. The MAGA crazies would kill to get us back there to that.
Enough has come out this past week, after the fiery dust up between Meghan McCain and Schmidt, due to her calling him a pedophile, kicked off this firestorm and brought up unresolved issues in the 2008 campaign. They are compelling to study because, again, Russia has been intervening in GOP politics for decades. Nikita Khrushchev said back in the 50’s that Russia would take over America without firing a shot and that is precisely what they have committed themselves to doing all these long years. Robert Mueller said, when testifying before Congress, that Russian election interference was taking place, “as we speak.”
– Why do you think McCain knew that some of his people had worked for Russian proxy candidates in Europe?
Terry Nelson, John Weaver and Mark Salter all told him. He knew that some of his team had worked for the bad guys.
How do those guys justify strengthening Putin’s hand? How do people who come from the U.S., who know our traditions and our way of life – who should know better –decide that they want to work to help the Russians? It is sick and pathetic.
– How did McCain justify keeping these people around?
There are three basic human response mechanisms: i) to know; ii) to feel; or iii) to think. I believe it comes down to the third category.
I’m no psychologist, but it’s certainly not a rare trait in humans to compartmentalize things. We find ways to justify what we want to do.
If John McCain had been elected in 2008, Rick Davis would have been his Chief of Staff and Vladimir Putin would have been quite content. This is so very strange considering how McCain felt about Russia.
McCain absolutely hated the Russians. He was not like Obama and Bush who had no strong feelings either way. He passionately loathed the Russians, which is why keeping people around him who worked for the Russians seems so paradoxical.
However, if you look at it from a self-interest perspective McCain thought he needed these guys to win. He thought that having them involved would propel him to the White House. Perhaps McCain didn’t think of them beyond the context of his own campaign.
Self interest triumphs over love of country. Amazing, coming from John McCain, but then again if we got one thing out of this skirmish last week, it was a de-mythololization of McCain. He may have been a heroic figure but he was not without some major flaws and it was those flaws that did him in, ultimately. His Russian connections, his affair with the much younger lobbyist, all of that gelled together into one of the most chaotic campaigns in American history.
Then eight years later we got Trump, up there at the podium, “Russia, if you’re listening…” Russia was always listening and they still are. On that you may depend.
His party has been cutting school funding for decades, and US government and civics got tossed long ago.
Davis and his pals were a means to an end for McCain when it comes to his 2008 candidacy. IF he’d won and Davis had become COS and tried to push for letting Putin/Russia slide on stuff McCain would have tossed his ass out the door. And if Davis tried to “get” McCain back remember McCain was more experienced with the system and knew it better. AND was quite capable of fighting back and fighting back hard and would have done so, scandal be damned since he would have had the proverbial Bully Pulpit.
Having said that I’m not surprised McCain would use Davis and his group to get elected. The McCain of the 1990s that led to his attempt for the Presidency and the “Straight Talk Express” was long gone. McCain was rightfully furious over the vile smear campaign in SC that tanked his candidacy in the 2000 primaries. He never, ever forgave Bush 43 and his people for that and it was no secret in DC how much he hated Bush Jr. Still, he wanted with all his heart to be President, and Bush could deliver something he knew he’d need in 2008 – the RWNJ KKKristian crowd. So he cut a deal with Bush and the leaders of the Evangelicals including kissing the senior Falwell’s ring (ass!) at Liberty university in exchange for full throated support of Bush’s re-election.
The “maverick” John McCain that had become so admired politically died right then and there. He proved in 2004 he would say and do anything, including temporarily align himself with guys who made fortunes supporting Putin, and who even orchestrated and actual ATTACK on a couple of busloads of U.S. Sailors and Marines (in Ukraine in fact) to get him into the White House. But again, I don’t believe he’d have gone soft on Putin or Russia. If Davis and gang didn’t like it McCain would have buried them with some of the shit they pulled for Putin including that attack on the guys headed to a planning conference for Ukraine taking part in joint NATO exercises. He’d have shown them the draft of a speech he’d give about impending Russian attempts to re-create the USSR, the FARA law and some other stuff and “suggest” our intelligence agencies put an emphasis on learning about connections and activities – and inform DOJ if any laws might have been broken. His AG would have gotten the hint! Basically McCain would have told them to walk away and STFU or be prepared to spend millions in legal fees keeping themselves out of jail, while finding themselves being cut off from contracts to work for other Republicans who wouldn’t want to cross the President/Head of their Party.
There are things about McCain I can admire, and things I’ve always held against him starting with him being the one who (he was a key DOD liaison to the WH at the time) convincing Reagan to yank us out of Beirut instead of reinforcing the mission there and shit-hammering the gomers who bombed our embassy and then the Marine Barracks. You’re old enough to remember “Vietnam Syndrome” and it was in full swing then. McCain had a full-blown case and I suspect that looking back he might have regretted what he did but he never spoke up and admitted he got that wrong. There’s also the whole Savings & Loan meltdown which he wound up skating on. I never met the man, but a distant relative from my dad’s side of the family was the only one of that p.o.s. trash down in Arkansas that turned out good and not only made something of himself but was wildly successful financially. He’d set up a program to house and educate poor and minority kids, and Keating’s antics cause his portfolio to collapse. Without that money the program had to shut down and he was despondent enough that he committed suicide. So I hold that against McCain too.
For all that, as Republicans go we could have done far worse than having him as a GOP President. Not that that’s saying much.