A Texas Turncoat Casts His Lustful Eyes Toward Obama

Mark McKinnon is once more practicing his dark craft of surfing the political zeitgeist to land on the shores of fame and prosperity. Perhaps the most opportunistic political consultant in the modern era, McKinnon makes Karl Rove appear to be a principled man. He has gone from progressive Democrat to Bush confidante to McCain advisor and now has his nose pressed to the glass looking in on the Obama campaign.

And nobody does it better.

McKinnon, who attempts to affect the sartorial profile of a French boulevardier as he travels on campaign jets, has the chameleon qualities necessary for political success. Lately, McKinnon has been looking with longing emotions at the Obama campaign and wishing he could play in his old sand box. The signals he is sending that he wants to come home to the Democrats are hardly subtle.

In the early '80s, Mark McKinnon was a progressive Democrat who believed that a government existed to create a fair climate of opportunity for all citizens. I had my share of campaign plane conversations with the novelist manqué and failed Nashville cat and they were always about the little guy getting a break. I thought we thought alike. I thought wrong.

McKinnon went to work for Democratic Texas Governor Mark White and in one of the more ironic moments of his career was the spokesperson who denounced Karl Rove when "Bush's Brain" claimed that White's campaign had bugged Rove's office. Rove, of course, the evidence shows, planted a microphone in his own office in order to detract from his client's failing gubernatorial campaign. Rove was the kind of guy who made McKinnon's skin crawl in those days but he became the kind of guy who made McKinnon's ambitions soar when he hooked up with W.

It took a while, though. McKinnon kept his Democratic and progressive leanings into the years that Ann Richards was the governor of Texas. When she took to the stage at the Democratic National Convention in 1988 and captivated the nation with her anti-Bush rhetoric, the talk of her presidential prospects left McKinnon drooling over his own chance of going to the big show. George W. Bush, however, put an end to Ann's ascension.

But not Mark McKinnon's.

As talk continued circulating about Governor Bush and the White House, McKinnon famously told a reporter about seeing Bush at a party and having that feeling that a man has "when he's at a party with his wife and sees a beautiful woman across the room." The description, which is akin to Rove's first impression of Bush in cowboy boots and blue jeans and more charisma "than any one person should be allowed to have," suggests there is something more latent than political principles in both advisors' fascination with the president.

McKinnon and Bush hooked up and the former Democrat rationalized it away by saying he was "a Bush guy" and not really a Republican. As the candidate's, and then the president's media advisor, McKinnon made the ads that trashed John McCain in South Carolina and beyond in 2000. Of course, that didn't preclude him from becoming the media advisor and TV producer for John McCain's 2008 presidential run. Ambition always trumps politics and principle for McKinnon.

And that's why he has presently cast his covetous eyes in the direction of Barack Obama.

McKinnon was already working for McCain in 2007 when he realized Obama was the kind of candidate he'd dreamed of working for back before he'd abandoned his beliefs for Bush money. McKinnon told McCain that if Obama were to win the Democratic nomination he would have to resign team McCain because the Illinois' senator's effort had the chance to change the country. McCain, who's made a few compromises of his own principles since hugging Bush and reconciling with Rove, said nothing.

The same pledge was made by McKinnon earlier this week on ABC News. If Obama wins, McKinnon quits McCain's campaign. Regardless of how much of an open insult this is to the Republican candidate who is paying McKinnon for his services, it is also revelatory concerning both McCain and McKinnon. The senator seems willing to put up with anything if it gets him closer to his political dream. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson stop being "agents of intolerance" and turn into the base needed for election and Mark McKinnon is not a traitor to the man he is supposedly trying to help win the election.

As for McKinnon, it just means he's still good at jumping from losing horse to the winner. Voters ought to heed this charlatan's words. McKinnon isn't the least bit concerned about harming Obama with attack ads; he knows that McCain cannot beat the Illinois Democrat and he hopes that if he quits McCain that Obama's people will hire him and he will be a Democrat again and back on a front-running horse.

Obama does show the potential to change the country, Mark. But ask yourself what he will be changing it from. He'll be changing it into something that doesn't even begin to resemble the tragedy President Bush and you have facilitated.

Just stay the hell out of the way.

Follow James Moore on Twitter: www.twitter.com/moorethink

Comments

[Blogvocate]

Interesting opinion, but unfortunatly its not backed up by the facts here.

McKinnon has not been paid a dime by the McCain campaign and has gone on the record as saying that he "disagree(s) with him (Obama) on very fundamental issues," and that "under any circumstances, depending on who the nominee is, (Mckinnon) will be supporting 100 percent John McCain.''

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/politics/blog/2008/02/mccain_adviser_cannot_campaign.html

More importantly, McKinnon made this decision clear to the McCain camp in a memo more than a year ago when he joined the campaign.

"One senior aide to John McCain has already said he's reluctant to attack Obama: last year, McCain's adman Mark McKinnon wrote an internal memo promising not to tape ads against the Illinois Democrat if he becomes the nominee. "

Looks to me like McKinnon is just following through on a principled stance.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/107476

[NewsNag]

"You just want to be on the side that's winning", Bob Dylan sang derisively, about a McKinnon-like person, someone with z-e-r-o principle and an easily deactivated conscience.

Slimy lost-soul chameleons like McKinnon, all ambition and no true compassion - the first automatically cancels out the latter - are good assassins (character and otherwise), because they don't give a damn, and they sleazily enjoy the negative affiliation with their dastardly deeds and the negative attention that comes with it.

So how do you fight back against dangerous amoral parasites like McKinnon? Derision, mockery, humiliation, followed by ostracism, and lastly forgiveness, but without their ability to re-earn any degree of trust.

Trust, like his soul, is gone forever.

Bye, Bye, Markie Mark. You peaked as Daily Texan editor, when you at least had one scruple. Ah, that was the day.

[LawrenceWalker]

I went to college with Mark McKinnon, meaning we took some American Studies classes together. We respected each other's views and each other's writing back in those days. Now, I've spent 25 years living impoverished to keep my anti-war, anti-imperialist principles intact, and he's become a Shakespearean character, a la Hamlet holding a skull.

I do have sympathy. A lot of us lose our way. Money and power and prestige and being a mover-and-shaker and known insider have their attractions, strong draws all. Perhaps Mark could redeem himself, in his own eyes and/or ours, by quitting the Republicans soon and offering to help Obama for free. That would be the hero's journey: do it for free this time. And say so far and wide. Help Obama for free, with money out of your own pocket, as I am, even when what I have is a mere few hundred dollars to my name. And say "no" to "trickle down" and "hundred year" wars and sucking up to the powers that be. We proud progressives, we committed liberals, welcome the newly formed AND the reformed, however they come, with love, appreciation and HOPE. Yes we can. Yes we do.

[missntexas]

Please stay away, Mark McKinnon! He reminds me of that 60s song "Did you ever have to make up your mind" by the lovin spoonful. Texas Democrats have long been known to have republican ways but this McKinnon guy could induce whiplash! No you can't support Karl Rove and George Bush and Barack Obama. Basically oil and water. What was this man thinking????? The democrats really don't want him and my guess is the republicans don't either!

[themodernleader]

Honor and integrity are at a premium as our republic declines. Candidate McCain would do well by publicly cashiering opportunistic McKinnon with the rationale as he privately fires him using his famous temper.
Second, Obama would be a fool to touch him with a ten-foot pole. Traditional, anti-democratic actors belong in neither party to smear the political discourse of of our potential leaders.

[cadawa]

The Democratic Party seems to have an affinity for men like McKinnon. Rather than apprehending Rove and his ilk, they seem to be doing their best to emulate them.
Obama will likely be pressured by the corrupt, wrong headed Democratic Leadership to accept the services of a such a man.
The problem is the Democrats do Machievelli very badly. In the end they alienate far more people than they attract.
Their attempts to profit from the worst in human nature have all but fatally wounded the Democratic Party.
Meanwhile they throw away their the most powerful tool they have; truth and justice.
A child has more wisdom than the clowns that aspire to lead the country.

[MichelleB]

Obama is leading in TX
http://americanresearchgroup.com/

[Montanamotor]

Imagine my (total lack of) surprise... 8-)

[richsmith]

This is a very informative blog side article. It's good some folks out there are keeping tabs on the Rove-like weasels slinking about Texas.

The blogosphere never ceases to impress me with how well it keeps us readers informed, without the burdens of maintaining unmanageable stores of facts and without the tedious prepping for research into the likes of McKinnon. Thanks for the assistance Mr. Moore.

[kellygrrrl]

a politician who will say anything to get elected -- will kiss the ass of anyone who can further their career climb? OMG! No way!

[kmdippenger]

You show that you understand the true nature of http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18981558//18981558/

[factcheck2]

The G.O.P. has been organizing Republicans to crossover and vote for Obama in the Democratic primaries since last fall. Time magazine reported on it and named top G.O.P. fundraisers who were funding Obama, rather than the Romney, McCain, etc. The goal is to knock out the stronger Democratic candidate, which means making the G.O.P. ticket inconsequential. Anyone who thinks that this character McKinnon or other Republicans who voted Nixon-Reagan-Bush-Bush will now vote Obama in a general election has lost their marbles. The so-called "next JFK" has been a G.O.P./corporate media scam since its inception. It works because people have no idea who this person is, since they never heard of him before 2005. For more on the G.O.P. strategy, which includes launching an independent slate later this year, see the article I've posted at thecityedition.com

[DrVandy]

Have you seen anyone regarding your paranoia?

[SShaw490]

What nonsense. Obama out-polls Hillary against McCain every time. If anything, it'd go the other way around - Republicans crossing over and voting for Hillary.

[austinfreethinker]

Having worked for a communications firm where McKinnon was a vice-chairman, I can honestly say that his enormous ego is one of the most opportunistic I have ever encountered. It's amazing what passes for talent these days. What I saw was a self-proclaimed "media pimp" who was completely without principle, focused on winning by using smear tactics and absolutely sickening in his blind devotion to one of the worst governors in Texas history, who he worked to make the worst president in U.S. history. I hope that Obama's campaign sends him back to the miserable Republican landscape he so vehemently helped create.

[esl]

Speaking of egos, it would be hard to match Obama's ego. He thinks if he wins the nomination the Hillary voters will vote for him. Me, I would vote for McCain before I would vote for the egotistical, Bush-like Obama.

[DrVandy]

Great, feel free to vote for the candidate who wants 100 yrs more of war in Iraq and laughed when one of his supporters referred to Hillary as "the b#tch".

[SShaw490]

Trust me, plenty of Obama supporters feel the same about Hillary. But at the end of the day, nobody with a brain is going to vote for McCain out of spite. But if you do, well, you'll just have to live with that decision.

[TheHandyman]

My, my, petulant child aren't we? You'd cut your nose off to spite your face too. I doubt whether your vote one way or the other means much, especially to you.

[jrutle]

The happy news to this story is that Obama doesn't need Mark McKinnon. Mr. McKinnon would be better off trying to rediscover his soul by supporting other Democratic candidates who are aligned with Obama's thinking and agenda and would support an Obama presidency. If McKinnon's at all sincere, he has some serious penitence to do for his role in giving us arguably one of the most corrupt and incompetent President's in American history.

[SShaw490]

Actually, I don't even think there's a job description for "Head Sleaze" in Obama's campaign. The quickest way for Obama to lose the election is to start acting like the other guys. He's doing so well because he's NOT like the other guys and/or women.

[azyuwish]

If McKinnon's at all sincere??

I want some of what you're smokin' if the world looks THIS rosy to you!

These types are never sincere. It's not even in their DNA. Opportunists have only one boss they're loyal to; one prime directive and it's called "me". At all costs.

[Puller58]

The landscape is littered with this sort of political refuse. Carville, Matelin, Morris, Begla, Shrum, Rove, McKinnon, Noonan, and the rest of this bunch continue to make money because people running for congress can't get anywhere without them. Just comes down to Sheeple Power. Of course it's like the old joke about the old lady who was asked if she was going to vote. She replied,"No, it would only encourage them." So true.

[SShaw490]

Voting for Obama is voting to get rid of those kinds of campaigns. That's Obama's central theme - that American politics has gotten so divisive, so polarized, so polluted that we have to start a new kind of conversation, in which we figure out what we have in common, not what we can find to fight about. His theme is that polarized politics ultimately doesn't work and the American people wind up with a paralyzed government that just feeds on itself. And Karl Rove didn't invent that kind of thing - one of the reasons so many Democrats jumped on Hillary's train before the campaign is they were afraid of the Clintons - with good reason. Rove may have refined slime to a high art, but Bill Clinton made it acceptable in politics.

[StephenDedalus82]

The blame belongs squarely on Newt Gingrich and his gerrymandered Republican majority. And Republicans aren't going to stop fighting Democrats just because Obama asks them nicely.

And frankly, I'm aware that Obama is running primarily on this new politics mumbo-jumbo. How about he run on something other than what the campaign consists of? There are more important things than candidates being mean to each other.

[StillAmused]

Watching the Olympian dumpster dives by McKinnon, Penn and other high-priced, self-promoting "consultants" reminds me why, after doing some local campaign management and media consulting, I chose to strangle the evil infant in its crib and step back. Brushing up against a couple of now-recognizable names, in their early incubation stages, helped.

Advancement in that arena requires checking your principles in the coat room, dropping any pretense of ideals and -- to paraphrase Dick Gregory -- learning to "lay the way the customer wants you to lay."

I can still be proud of the few candidates I have helped, and grateful I got off that conveyor belt when I did. Its ultimate destination is a black hole where, like Karl Rove, you get to enable a war criminal and cash his checks.