shouting loudly

McCain’s Telecom Immunity Problem

Senator John McCain faces two major political problems surrounding the issue of retroactive immunity for telecommunications firms that complied with the Bush administration’s warrantless (and thus, illegal) wiretapping program. Both point to larger weaknesses in the McCain campaign.

First, McCain has been consistently inconsistent on whether he thinks companies should be let off the hook retroactively. Declan McCullagh has a great post summarizing McCain’s shifting positions on telecom immunity (just the latest of McCain’s flip-flops).

In 2005, McCain wanted the lawsuits to go forward. Now, he’s parroting the Bush administration party line: unconditional immunity.

In a second, related problem for McCain, the EFF has broken the story that the McCain campaign staff includes several prominent telecom lobbyists.

These reveal deeper weaknesses in the campaign. First is McCain’s need to corral the far right wing of his party. At the start of the campaign, the neocons in particular were worried by the senator’s perceived moderate stances on national security issues, including torture.

The telecom immunity switch (much like his switch on torture) shows how McCain now wants to have it both ways. He has ditched a formerly strong principled stand because he dares not cross Bush and create an impression of non-zealotry on national security.

Including lobbyists in his campaign staff–despite having sponsored legislation that would ban exactly that practice–shows him flip-flopping on campaign ethics for another reason: without ignoring campaign laws and legislative proposals, even those bearing his name, McCain cannot compete with Obama’s massive resources.

Thanks to amazing grassroots support from small donors, Obama has raised approximately $593 bazillion dollars to McCain’s $85.07. The senior senator from Arizona thus needs all the free help he can get. (I wonder if he’d take me on as his debate coach.)

McCain has even larger problems on the breaking-the-rules-he-wrote front. With only 2 commissioners serving, the Federal Elections Commission lacks a quorum and is thus technically unable to release him from the public campaign financing system to which he earlier agreed.

With his nomination all but sewn up in February, McCain’s new fundraising power led him to conclude that he could unilaterally change his mind, opting out of the public financing system without FEC approval. Republican FEC Chairman David M. Mason sent McCain a stern letter disabusing him of this notion, a fact that has been underplayed in much of the media reporting on the issue.

Thanks to Senate gridlock, the FEC still has just two commissioners, and McCain is still bound by the $54m spending cap to which he agreed. Nonetheless, FEC data state that he has already spent $66.5m and will almost certainly spend tens of millions more before the Republican convention.

Thus, having telecom lobbyists run his campaign is really part and parcel with McCain’s broader campaign ethics problem. He is violating the campaign laws and proposals that were to be his strongest marker of integrity.

Likewise, his change of heart on telecom immunity is part-and-parcel with his overall rightward dive away from the constitutional rule of law.

P.S. This is probably the most partisan piece in ShoutingLoudly history, but I think it’s still 100% within our blog’s tradition of putting constitutional principles before national-security-flavored scare tactics.

[Modified from earlier version, in which I'd described a "$50m fundraising cap". The limit is $54, and this Washington Post article correctly describes it as a spending limit.]