McCain's Media Mastermind Will Quit if Obama Is Nominated

McCain's Media Mastermind Will Quit if Obama Is Nominated

By Rory O'Connor

Created Feb 20 2008 - 9:27am

If you're a Democratic primary voter in Ohio, Texas or Pennsylvania, and

you're still torn between Obama and the Clintons, here's the best reason I

know to throw your support to Obama: Mark McKinnon.

Love him [1] or hate him [2], there's general agreement that McKinnon -- the

chief media adviser and strategist for presumptive Republican nominee John

McCain -- is a genius at what he does. So it's no surprise that, even though

it's relatively old 'news [3],' word that McKinnon will stop working for

McCain if Obama is the Democratic nominee has been freshly burning up

cyberspace of late.

Citing his admiration for the Illinois senator, McKinnon says he cannot face

being part of a campaign that "would inevitably be attacking" Obama. "I have

met Barack Obama. I have read his book. I like him a great deal, he told

National Public Radio [4]. "I disagree with him on very fundamental issues,

but it would be uncomfortable for me, and it would be bad for the McCain

campaign."

But who is Mark McKinnon -- and why does his unusual stance matter so much?

For starters, because as the chief media adviser and strategist for the

Bush-Cheney campaigns, he arguably deserves more credit (or blame, depending

on your politics!) than any other individual for George Bush being in the

White House. Anyone who can get George Bush elected president of the United

States twice (and governor of Texas before that) is a danger to Democrats

everywhere, and the fact that McKinnon will withdraw his services from

McCain in the event of an Obama nomination should be music to the ears of

anyone who wants to see an end to our long national nightmare -- aka the

Bush administration and its possible successors.

I first met McKinnon in 2004 while covering the presidential media campaigns

for the television industry journal Broadcasting & Cable. He returned my

first call immediately -- unlike his inept Democratic counterparts, who

failed to return 14 calls and then hung up when I finally got through. After

telling me to check in with presidential counselor Dan Bartlett (who also

promptly returned the call), McKinnon then invited me to spend a day at the

Bush/Cheney campaign offices in suburban Virginia.

Upon arrival, I asked McKinnon what his media plan for the campaign against

John Kerry would be. To my surprise, instead of dodging, filibustering or

ignoring the question, he answered in a forthright manner. "We plan to spend

$60 million in the next 90 days defining John Kerry before he can define

himself," McKinnon told me.

"How are you going to define him?" I shot back.

"As a flip-flopping liberal who's wrong on defense," McKinnon replied.

I then watched in amazement over the next three months as he proceeded to do

exactly that. Within weeks of our conversation, ordinary people all over the

country suddenly began saying that they had doubts about Kerry --

particularly, they parroted, because he seemed like such a "flip-flopper."

The mainstream media lapdogs soon followed suit [5].

Kerry never recovered from the preemptive assault on his authenticity, which

was later reinforced by images of windsurfing and clips of him saying, "I

actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it." Game, set

and match to the Republican side.

So who, then, is Mark McKinnon? And why is the man who first elected George

W. Bush, and later rescued John McCain from the land of the politically dead

and then took him to the brink of the nomination, saying he won't help

McCain in November if Obama is the Democratic candidate? The high-school

dropout, one-time staff songwriter for Kris Kristofferson, formerly

Democratic political operative who once denounced Karl Rove, and friend of

such liberal heavyweights as onetime Clinton advisers Paul Begala and James

Carville, seems an unlikely choice as President Bush's or candidate McCain's

campaign media director. But politics is first and foremost about winning --

and McKinnon's candidates win.

"It all started with Hank the Hallucination," McKinnon recalls. "Hank and

Paul Begala are the reasons I got into politics." Hank, an illustrated comic

strip character in the Daily Texan, the student newspaper McKinnon edited,

ran with his backing against Begala in a 1982 contest for student government

president at the University of Texas in Austin -- and won. "I was a bit of

an anarchist in those days," McKinnon recalls.

Hank was the first in a long series of winning candidates that McKinnon has

backed. "I was a volunteer for Lloyd Doggett in my first real campaign in

1983," he says. "Carville was the campaign manager, and Begala was in the

upper echelon. He brought me out of the basement."

McKinnon continued to work in winning Texas Democratic campaigns after that,

helping to elect Ann Richards as governor in 1990 and Bob Lanier as mayor of

Houston in 1991, among others. But by 1996, as he explained in a Texas

Monthly essay called "The Spin Doctor is Out [6]," he had burned out on

partisan politics and "last-minute attack and response ads." Instead he

planned to concentrate on corporate clients and public affairs, such as a

successful 1997 effort to preserve affirmative action.

Then he fell in love, and everything changed. As he famously told a

reporter, McKinnon saw Bush at a party and had the feeling that a man has

"when he's at a party with his wife and sees a beautiful woman across the

room."

The object of his newfound affection was George W. Bush, then governor of

Texas. "It is unusual" for a conservative Republican politician and a

liberal Democrat media maven to hook up, McKinnon admits. "The nexus was

[Democratic] Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock, who was my mentor." McKinnon and Bush

became jogging partners and fast friends. Soon Bush began courting McKinnon

professionally as well.

"Even as governor, President Bush was famously skeptical about political

consultants," McKinnon says. "And at the time, all the typical Republican

hired guns were circling. Hiring me was certainly a counter-intuitive move.

I think he liked the idea that I wasn't looking to work in politics

anymore."

In the end, McKinnon says, he decided to work for Bush "out of respect,

loyalty and friendship -- which as you know are qualities that are very

important to the Bush culture." Those feelings were reciprocated by Bush,

who put McKinnon in charge of two of the most well-financed media operations

in history.

The strategies McKinnon employed in the past decade may seem awfully

negative for a man who says, "Negativity drove me out of politics in the

mid-'90s." (After all, McKinnon was the architect of the ads that trashed

John McCain in South Carolina and beyond in 2000, ensuring a Bush

nomination.) But McKinnon says it isn't so.

"It's not negative to define John Kerry. We're not doing attack ads, we're

doing strong contrast ads," he told me four years ago. "That's legitimate,

not negative. We aren't saying Kerry is 'weak on defense,' we're saying he's

'wrong on defense.' There's a big difference."

As I wrote at the time, "The war of words matters a lot, and while McKinnon

concedes that the Bush campaign is busy testing them in focus groups, he

offers no details. Still, it's clear he is attempting to position the

president as a "steady" leader and Kerry as a "flip-flopper" who changes

positions often for political expediency. If the words work, they will be

repeated over and over as part of that 'coordinated blitz' aimed at defining

Kerry as 'indecisive and lacking conviction.'"

Despite the fierce hatred he has engendered in some of his former friends,

McKinnon generally remains an approachable and affable figure. Even

Begala -- who eventually did become student body president by winning a

runoff between the "two top humans" after Hank the Hallucination was gunned

down -- extols him. "I love him!" Begala told me. "He's a wonderful,

terrific guy."

Even though he went over to the Dark Side?

"It's a free country. Sure, he was way to the left of me in college, and now

he's way to the right," Begala responded. "But hey -- James Carville goes

home every night and goes to bed with Mary Matalin ... Mark has changed his

life, but I don't believe he had a conservative epiphany.

"I believe him when he says this is based on a deep and personal love of

George Bush. But this is not a race for student government president,"

Begala concluded. "Still, if Bush is ruining the country, I say let's attack

the organ grinder and not the monkey."

"I haven't taken as many shots as I thought I would," McKinnon conceded at

the time. "Probably because Begala blessed me."

Would he describe himself as a Republican?

"Let's just say I'm a man of evolution," he responded with a grin.

His many critics now contend that, far from "evolving," McKinnon is just an

opportunistic turncoat, a lustful chameleon, a bizarre sellout ... and

worse. In any event, now it's time for another hallucinatory campaign, and

McKinnon is once again in the thick of it.

Just ask John McCain -- or Barack Obama, for that matter!

--

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Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107

"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their

spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their

government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are

suffering deeply in spirit,

and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public

debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have

patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning

back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at

stake."

-Thomas Jefferson