McCainiac Hypocrisy
Meet John Weaver, the Big-Money consultant who hates Big Money.

August 16, 2001 3:00 p.m.

ypocrisy isn't such an awful thing. It represents the breathing space between our fallen selves and our higher ideals.

But, that said, it's still worth pausing to relish the latest, positively delightful example of McCainiac hypocrisy, as reported in an excellent Roll Call article last week. (To be fair, McCain has actually been on a nice run recently, as NR noted last issue).

It wasn't too long ago (way back in 1996) that John McCain wanted to ban PACs, and excoriated anyone so shortsighted and corrupt as to dare to oppose his effort. He's now dropped that particular enthusiasm, but still rails, of course, against Big Money in politics.

Well, now we learn that not only did McCain's PAC, Straight Talk America, raise $1.3 million in the first six months of this year — it spent almost half of it on consultants and fundraising. Hey, straight talk is expensive!

According to Roll Call, McCain consultant John Weaver gets $15,000 a month from the PAC. In the course of his selfless guerrilla war on Big Money, Weaver also spent more than $10,000 to stay at the Hotel George on Capitol Hill (he lives in New Hampshire).

Now, I begrudge the talented Weaver none of this money. He was part of the hungry and imaginative cadre that made McCain such an early success in the Republican primaries. So, as far as I know, Weaver gives the best advice money can buy on how to talk straight. (Indeed, it would probably be folly for McCain even to try to talk straight without Weaver whispering in his ear.)

But what is irritating is that, during the campaign, McCain blasted as corrupt National Right to Life Committee's Doug Johnson (by name) and everyone like him (in general) for engaging in exactly this sort of activity — fundraising and Washington advocacy on behalf of a cause. (And I hazard to guess that Johnson does it more efficiently than the top-heavy Straight Talk America — Kate O'Beirne profiles Johnson in the latest NR as "the most effective lobbyist in Washington.")

So, if he cares at all about consistency, McCain owes Johnson an apology. But it's not likely: The incoherent campaign for campaign-finance reform is having more and more trouble cohering.

For instance, I think offtrack betting in New York City is probably corrupt, or if not corrupt in the strict fixed-races sense, it's at least a grubby business. So, I would never become a bookie.

If John Weaver really thinks Big Money politics is corrupt, one would think he'd go out of his way to avoid becoming a Big Money Washington consultant. It is on this principle that, say, televangelists don't cavort with strippers, or when they're caught doing it, at least act really embarrassed.

Weaver, however, is not embarrassed. His excuse is that he's the only honest man in Washington. "It's the difference between people who are in Washington to get something done and people who are in Washington who want to be someone," Weaver told Roll Call.

What Weaver won't acknowledge is that most every other consultant/lobbyist type in Washington is in the business for roughly the same reason he is: some combination of passion, ideology, and self-interest that impels them to camp out in Washington and try to change the nation's laws.

Weaver can't admit this, of course, because it would undermine the central conceit of campaign-finance reform: that political advocacy — consulting, lobbying, the whole business — is somehow rotten to the core. So Weaver, a perfectly pleasant man, has to keep up at least a public posture of being a self-righteous, hypocritical bore.

And, come to think of it, it's hard to imagine a more appropriate way to serve John McCain. Give that man a raise!