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Mark Shields: The business lobby's campaign against McCain
WASHINGTON (Creators Syndicate) -- Thanks to Robert Pear and Richard A. Oppel Jr. of The New York Times, we know that the kingpins of America's drug companies held an unpublicized, post-election victory and strategy summit at a private location near Washington's Dulles airport. After pharmaceutical companies had put more than $30 million into congressional campaigns to elect their friends, the drug chiefs want and expect a friendly Republican-run Congress to kill any profit-threatening price controls on prescription drugs or any liberal scheme to allow citizens to buy cheaper, generic versions of expensive brand-name medicines. The Republican House promptly showed its gratitude by secretly inserting provisions in the anti-terrorism Homeland Security Bill to allow Eli Lilly to escape liability for any childhood autism linked to its smallpox vaccine and to allow American companies that move their legal address offshore just to avoid paying U.S. taxes to win federal contracts paid for by American taxpayers. Apparently "drugged" and responsive to the entreaties of the nation's commander-in-chief, who on the eve of the NATO meeting in Prague called asking them to keep the corporate sweetheart deals in the security bill, Senate Republicans were complicit with one exception -- John McCain of Arizona. He condemned such special interest bonanzas for what they are, "war-profiteering," and added, "I don't think it's accidental that pharmaceutical companies contributed $20 million to Republican candidates in the last election." It is just that kind of blunt truth-telling that has made McCain, rather than any congressional Democrat, the most-feared and loathed nemesis of Washington's K Street business-political axis. Unable to refute McCain's logic, his enemies follow the example of some Bush operatives in the 2000 primaries -- they try to smear McCain's character. That must have been the objective of the November 21 lead editorial in the Bush White House's favorite newspaper, The Washington Times, which accused McCain of basing his opposition to the special-interest provisions not on any principle, but instead on the House bill's failure to include liability protection for the Argenbright airport security company. The Times editorial reported a conversation between McCain and House Majority leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, in which McCain threatened to vote against the homeland security bill without Argenbright 's getting special treatment, too. There is a major problem: This is a big lie. According to Dick Armey's handwritten note to the Arizona maverick, "I had no conversation with you on the homeland defense bill, nor any part thereof, especially the issues of liability limitations to airport screeners." Nor was the lobbyist for Argenbright, as the Times editorial insisted, ever either McCain's Senate staff director or ever the Senate Commerce staff director under McCain. In fact, he was a legislative counsel on McCain's personal Senate staff who left that post 14 years ago to go to work on the committee for Missouri Sen. John Danforth, since retired. When Senate GOP leadership asked the once and future Senate Commerce Committee chairman for his reaction to the proposed liability exemptions for the airport screener companies, McCain simply asked in a letter to Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Mississippi, if there was any reason why "all security companies should not be afforded the same treatment under the law" and then added, "However I have not been fully briefed on all aspects of this matter and ... will leave the ultimate decision regarding this provision to your discretion." No conversation between Armey and McCain -- according to Armey and McCain. There is no evidence from anyone with a name or a face that McCain was ever, as the Times editorial charges, the "champion of Argenbright." There is only an ugly, baseless smear against this man, who almost alone commands the trust of the voters and the credibility of the press to threaten by public exposure those cozy deals, not in the common interest, between Republicans in power and their corporate bankroller-cronies. McCain, who on Thursday called conservative icon Rush Limbaugh (somebody who obviously enjoys being taken seriously) "an entertainer" and went on to compare Limbaugh to "a circus clown," drives right-wing Republicans bananas. Knowing they cannot rebut his central claim that Big Money calls the tune in our politics and in his party, some McCain enemies are simply out to discredit his character and destroy his effectiveness. If they ever succeed, you can be sure there will be few tears shed on Washington's K Street.
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