Grins and Grenades

MSNBC ^ | 1/26/04 | Howard Fineman and Michael Isikoff

[Tumbleweed_Connection]

To be a successful "oppo guy"—an opposition researcher for a presidential candidate—you need to know how to play defense as well as offense. In the Democrats' increasingly vicious race, Chris Lehane, Wesley Clark's oppo guy, is state of the art, a Harvard Law School alum with a sharp mind and tongue. He knows how to play it both ways. He's spent months in attack mode, serving as a one-man tip sheet for reporters examining the shortcomings of Howard Dean, especially the former Vermont governor's refusal to release all of his official records. But last week Lehane hunkered down. Preparing for close scrutiny of his man in New Hampshire, where a tight race was shaping up, Lehane opened a "reading room" in Manchester and packed it with stacks of the retired general's military, tax and lobbying records. "Contrast that with what Dean has done—or hasn't done—by way of full disclosure," Lehane crowed.

A good move, perhaps—but not enough to pre-empt scrutiny. Records in the "reading room" and elsewhere show that Clark used extensive contacts in the Bush administration to lobby on behalf of a company eager to get post-9/11 security work. As an Arkansas businessman, Clark had buttonholed Vice President Dick Cheney and, NEWSWEEK learned, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, aides to FBI Director Robert Mueller and his former chief deputy commander in Europe. The aim: to get a contract for Acxiom, a Little Rock firm whose "data mining" techniques are useful in tracking terrorists. The lobbying—for which Clark was paid about $400,000—must have helped: Acxiom got a contract. Everything was aboveboard and disclosed, Lehane said. But Clark's eagerness to do a deal was ironic, given his more recent criticism of the Bush administration's handling of security. And the Dean campaign, furious at weeks of at-tacks on their own candidate, took the occasion to fire at will. "Clark portrays himself as an outsider when he's really just another Washington insider," said Dean spokesman Jay Carson. "It turns out that this guy was a registered lobbyist long before he was a registered Democrat."

So it goes—and so it will continue to go—in what could be a nasty, brutish and long slog to the Democratic convention next July in Boston. In Washington and at Camp David, George W. Bush was surrounded by calm and confidence as he rehearsed his State of the Union speech, scheduled, as it happens, for the night after the Iowa caucuses...

[AngrySpud]

"Turns out this guy (Clark) was a registered lobbyist long before he was a registered Democrat."

A great line.