I noticed something odd in two articles I read over the last couple days. First, in I noticed something odd in two articles I read over the last couple days. First, in Jeff Toobin's highly recommended New Yorker piece on the gleeful sleazeball Roger Stone, there's this anecdote at the end:
[Stone's] only prior dealing with John McCain was bumpy. “I was doing some lobbying for Trump's airline in the eighties, and he was competing for landing slots at LaGuardia against America West Airlines, so I went to see McCain about it in his office at the Capitol,” Stone told me. “I made an offhand comment that it wasn't surprising that he was backing America West, because they were based in Phoenix. He stood up and said, ‘What the fuck are you talking about? Get the fuck out of my office!' But I didn't take it personally. I supported him in 2000, and I support him now.”
And then in the Washington Post's piece on McCain consigliere Charles Black, who had been a partner with Stone in the '80s in the lobbying firm then called Black, Manafort, Stone and Atwater, and now under another name is a subsidiary of Mark Penn's Burson-Marsteller, there's this:
But those bonds did not always lead to success, Black said. He acknowledged lobbying McCain in the late 1990s on behalf of Robert L. Crandall, then chairman of American Airlines. As Black recalled, he took Crandall to speak to McCain about the potential granting of landing slots at Reagan National Airport to new airlines, including America West, which was based in Phoenix, the senator's home town. Crandall was opposed to giving out new slots.
During the meeting, Black said, Crandall mentioned that McCain had a "parochial interest" in the matter, because of the home-state airline, but that he hoped the senator would listen to his viewpoint anyway. Upon the mention of parochial interest, however, McCain "stood up and politely said, 'This meeting is over,' " Black said.
"Crandall looked at me, and I said, 'Say goodbye, Bob, we're leaving,' " Black recalled.
Adjusted for the F-word-tolerance of the two publications, and the different airport, these are two versions of exactly the same anecdote. On balance, it's favorable to McCain -- it shows his anger, but it also shows him kicking slick lobbyists out of his office -- even a close friend.
But, you might ask, why is a senator so involved in the allocation of landing slots at a particular airport? Isn't that an administrative decision of the Federal Aviation Administration? Isn't meddling in that process a bit like earmarks?
Yes, it is. A Google search on McCain and America West reveals that getting more landing slots for the company was a major preoccupation of McCain's in the 1990s. And it was more than a parochial interest on behalf of a constituent: As the chapter on McCain in the book, The Buying of the President, 2000, published by the Center for Public Integrity shows (scroll down to last section, and I'll paste it in below the break), America West was a major financial backer of McCain, and one of his top aides, John W. Timmons, became America West's lobbyist. America West donated a charter plane to Cindy McCain's charity, American Voluntary Medical Team, for a trip to Kuwait, and this story in TheStreet.com says that Cindy McCain's Hensley Group holds a large stake in US Airways, the successor to America West. In return, McCain pushed through legislation to open landing slots at the four most crowded airports in the east.
In my column on McCain last month, I wrote that "It's easy to be a maverick standing up to one special interest while serving the interests of another." The useful story of McCain kicking the lobbyists -- Stone and Black -- out of his office is yet another example.
-- Mark Schmitt
