You are using an outdated browser.
Please upgrade your browser
and improve your visit to our site.
Skip Navigation

The Mccain–burma Connection

This is pretty disturbing:

The man picked by the John McCain campaign to run the 2008 Republican National Convention resigned Saturday after a report that his lobbying firm used to represent the military regime in Myanmar.

Doug Goodyear, chief executive of the lobbying firm DCI Group, resigned a few hours after Newsweek posted a report online saying the company was paid $348,000 in 2002 to represent the government in Myanmar, also known as Burma.

Sleazy lobbyists? On the McCain campaign?? You don't say! Still, managing to find someone who's been an advocate for a tyrannical regime is an impressive feat even for McCain.

Update: Commenter ilnoca highlights this post from Marc Ambinder, which reports that Doug Davenport, McCain's regional campaign manager for the mid-Atlantic states, has also resigned because of his past lobbying for Burma. (You really can't trust people named Doug, apparently.) Ambinder also points out that Goodyear became convention CEO after McCain's original choice, Paul Manafort, was passed over because of his own history of close ties to shady foreign governments. Makes you wonder exactly which governments those could be, if Burma isn't enough to raise red flags in the McCain vetting process.

--Josh Patashnik