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To give a little more context to the attack ad Obama released yesterday linking John McCain to Ralph Reed and Jack Abramoff, you have to remember that the Abramoff revolved around the fedora-wearing lobbyist's efforts to bilk Native-American tribes out of millions of dollars. Consequently, the first round of the investigation came before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, which John McCain, at that time, chaired. My former colleague Sam Rosenfeld reported what happened next:
In late June, the Senate Indian Affairs Committee held the third in its series of hearings on the sprawling casino-lobbying scandal centering on former Tom DeLay cronies Jack Abramoff and Michael Scanlon...The problem is, Democrats seem to have mistakenly assumed that committee Chairman John McCain would do their partisan work for them. In fact, the Arizona “maverick,” eyeing an '08 presidential run, has made it abundantly clear that his committee's investigation will not touch Republican lawmakers, assuring Senate colleagues of as much in a widely reported meeting in March. With money from Abramoff's Indian clients having been connected not only to DeLay but also to Congressman Bob Ney and Senators Conrad Burns and Mark Vitter, such a self-imposed restriction “obviously makes for a pretty huge hole in the investigation,” according to Naomi Seligman of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).And, sure enough, the June 22 hearing (focusing on the Mississippi Choctaw tribe) aired plenty of fun details about Abramoff and Scanlon's various shenanigans, particularly their use of myriad front groups to launder casino money. But barely a lawmaker's name was mentioned in three and a half hours of testimony and questioning. Indeed, in his apparent efforts to dampen the political explosiveness of the hearing, McCain went further than merely ignoring the role of sitting lawmakers in the saga; he neglected in the end to require that high-level GOP operatives Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist, both of whom had been subpoenaed by the committee, actually appear and give testimony at the hearing.This was, for Democrats a surprised. McCain loathed Grover Norquist. His dealings with Ralph Reed weren't quite so personal, but he wasn't exactly enamored with the political structure that Reed represented. And the corrupt Republican lawmakers their testimony would implicate were not among the Washington-types McCain was reputed to have as friends. But mindful of his presidential ambitions, McCain dampened the investigation. Folks forget that it could have been McCain who benefited politically from the anti-Abramoff hunt, but he made a decision to pass that baton and collect a couple chits from the GOP establishment. Now, as Obama's ad notes, he's calling them in. Reed is fundraising for him. Norquist is supporting him. And the GOP establishment has embraced him. If McCain had lived up to his reputation as an anti-corruption reformer in 2005. it's likely that none of these things would have happened.
