Lanny Davis, who is trashing the Swift Boat vets on places like CNN, has his own interesting past:
[The Washington Post, December 21, 1996]
He won the 1976 Democratic primary and was neck and neck with Republican Newton Steers until a controversy erupted over the portrayal of Davis’s academic record in a campaign brochure. Davis claimed he had graduated from Yale Law School cum laude — a designation the school didn’t award in 1970, the year he finished.
And if you think Lanny often sounds like a door-to-door Amway salesman, there’s a reason for it. The same Post article teaches us:
After he narrowly lost a 1976 House race, Davis, 51, began evangelizing for the motivational door-to-door distribution company, which markets everything from toothpaste to telephone service. A prominent Maryland lawyer-lobbyist, who refused to speak for attribution, recalled that Davis once invited him to lunch to discuss a “business opportunity.”
“We didn’t order yet when he started talking, and it was like a switch went on,” the lobbyist recounted. “He asked, ‘Are you interested in making more money?’ Well, what lawyer isn’t? ‘Do you want to be in control of your destiny?’ And I go, ‘Wait a minute, Lanny — is this an Amway pitch?’