The latest in a seemingly endless series of campaign position resignations during this seemingly endless presidential campaign season came from John McCain's camp.
First, Doug Goodyear stepped aside.
The public relations executive whom Senator John McCain’s campaign had chosen to run the Republican National Convention this summer resigned his post on Saturday after a magazine reported that his firm had lobbied for the military junta that runs Myanmar.
The executive, Doug Goodyear, said in a statement that he was stepping down as the coordinator of the convention, which will be held Sept. 1-4 in Minneapolis-St. Paul, “so as not to become a distraction in this campaign.”
“I continue to strongly support John McCain for president and wish him the best of luck in this campaign,” the two-sentence statement concluded.
Mr. Goodyear is the chief executive and a founding partner of the DCI Group, which has offices in Washington and Phoenix. He offered his resignation after Newsweek reported that his firm had been paid $348,000 in 2002 to represent the junta.
The rulers of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, have been widely condemned for stymieing relief efforts after a cyclone ravaged the country’s coastal areas on May 3, killing thousands. The United States has denounced the Burmese government as one of the world’s most repressive, and Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, has long been critical of the government as well. During the campaign, he has called for Myanmar’s leaders to halt human rights abuses.
...Newsweek reported that Justice Department lobbying records showed that the DCI Group pushed to “begin a dialogue of political reconciliation” and led a public relations campaign to burnish the junta’s image.
The appointment of Mr. Goodyear was sensitive for Mr. McCain. It came after the senator had been criticized by some Republican primary opponents for employing several lobbyists and former lobbyists to run his campaign. And he is preparing for the possibility of a general election campaign against Senator Barack Obama, an Illinois Democrat who has made a point of his independence from lobbyists.
An official in the McCain camp said the campaign appreciated Mr. Goodyear’s timely resignation and his work on the convention. The official said there was no word yet on a successor.
Goodyear wasn't the only staffer to resign from the McCain campaign due to the Myanmar connection.
Another Doug, Doug Davenport, followed Goodyear's lead.
Sen. John McCain’s campaign received the second resignation of the weekend on Sunday from a staffer with ties to a firm representing Myanmar’s military junta.
Doug Davenport, a regional campaign director for the Mid-Atlantic states, officially left the Republican presidential campaign on Sunday. His departure came a day after that of Doug Goodyear, who was to run the campaign’s convention in St. Paul, Minn., this summer.
Both Davenport and Goodyear worked at DCI Group, a consulting firm in Washington and Arizona. Davenport headed the firm’s lobbying operations. As of Sunday, Goodyear was listed as a founding partner and CEO.
On Saturday, Newsweek broke the story about Goodyear’s role representing Myanmar’s military junta in 2002, for which the firm received $348,000. Among the tasks DCI Group undertook: a PR campaign to improve the military junta’s image—the same regime that is now restricting aid to hundreds of thousands of the country’s cyclone victims.
Nary four hours after the story was published online, Goodyear resigned.
Davenport wrote an email to Jill Hazelbaker, the McCain campaign’s communications director, on Sunday afternoon with the subject “Resignation Quote.” The brief statement included the following bit of explanation and self defense: “I have long supported John McCain and do not want anything in my past business career - whether properly depicted or not - to distract the Senator’s Campaign.”
It makes sense for these staffers to step aside.
McCain shouldn't give the Dems any ammunition to use against him.
I just think that some of these resignations are unwarranted.
For instance, Geraldine Ferraro resigned from Hillary Clinton's campaign because she dared to comment on Obama's race being a factor in his run for the presidency. She was slimed and called a racist. It wasn't fair, but she didn't want to hurt Hillary.
Although the staffers' Myanmar connections are a very different matter than Ferraro simply stating her opinion, the resignations of Goodyear and Davenport have occurred for a similar reason: They didn't want to become a distraction. They didn't want to be an issue.
I do think this is rather interesting:
Newsweek reported that Justice Department lobbying records showed that the DCI Group pushed to “begin a dialogue of political reconciliation” and led a public relations campaign to burnish the junta’s image.
Isn't Barack Obama all for dialogue and reconciliation, Jimmy Carter-style?
Isn't dialogue fundamental to Obama's foreign policy philosophy? Isn't that it in a nutshell -- unconditional dialogue with tyrants?
That aside, it is awkward for Goodyear and Davenport to be part of McCain's campaign given their past work on behalf of the military junta. It runs counter to McCain's position on the Myanmar government.
However, it should be clear that the men are not connected to the massive humanitarian catastrophe following Cyclone Nargis.
I doubt the DCI Group would have respresented Myanmar's military junta after its dramatic and deadly disregard for the victims of the storm.
Not that the junta was a worthy client in 2002, but I wonder if people hear about McCain staffers resigning and assume that the men were currently working in support of the Myanmar government blocking humanitarian relief.
At least the U.S. is finally being allowed to assist.
YANGON, Myanmar -- The United States launched its first relief airlift to Myanmar on Monday, after prolonged negotiations with the isolated country's military rulers, who have been accused of restricting international efforts to help as many as 1.5 million cyclone survivors at risk of disease and starvation.
The flight took off from a base in Thailand a day after the monumental task of feeding and sheltering the survivors suffered yet another blow when a boat laden with relief supplies — one of the first international shipments — sank on its way to the disaster zone.
The junta has been sharply criticized for its handling of the May 3 disaster, from failing to provide adequate warnings about the pending storm to responding slowly to offers of help.
Though international assistance has started trickling in, the few foreign relief workers who have been allowed entry into Myanmar have been restricted to the largest city of Yangon. Only a handful have succeeded in getting past checkpoints into the worst-affected areas.
The death toll jumped to more than 28,000 on Sunday and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband warned that "malign neglect" by the isolated nation's military rulers was creating a "humanitarian catastrophe of genuinely epic proportions."
But in what was seen as a huge concession by the junta, it gave the United States, which it views as its enemy, the go-ahead to send a C-130 cargo plane packed with supplies to Yangon on Monday. Two more air shipments were scheduled to land Tuesday.
The C-130, loaded with 28,000 pounds of supplies, including mosquito nets, blankets and water, took off from the Thai air force base in Utapao. Lt. Col. Douglas Powell, U.S. Marines spokesman for the operation, said the plane was carrying U.S. government, not military, supplies and was unarmed.
Myanmar's military rulers are deeply suspicious of Washington, which has long been one of the junta's biggest critics, pointing to human rights abuses and its failure to hand over power to a democratically elected government.
"We hope that this is the beginning of a long line of assistance from the United States," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe told reporters in Crawford, Texas over the weekend. "They're going to need our help for a long time."
Hopefully, the Myanmar government will permit more relief workers to assist the suffering. Hopefully, this is the first of many U.S. airlifts.
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More on the politicization of the crisis in Myanmar:
ABC Calls Myanmar Cyclone 'Asia's Katrina'
That's a real stretch. Unfortunately, the lib media's comparison of the cyclone to Katrina was totally predictable. It was as predictable as it is despicable.
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