The ever-widening influence and power of lobbying
JOE BENNETT
Let’s consider Paul. Born in Connecticut on April Fool’s day 1949, he started work in the 70s as a lawyer in Washington. There he found an interest in politics and in 1980 he helped organise Ronald Reagan’s campaign for president. You may remember that campaign. Reagan repeatedly described America as the shining city on a hill, a beacon of light for all freedom-loving people.
When Reagan won the presidency, Paul’s reward was a position in the White House Personnel Office. That’s how things work in Shining City.
In the same year, coincidentally, Paul and some friends formed a lobbying company. Lobbying companies exist to influence governments on behalf of their clients.
Remember Marcos? Yes, that Marcos, the president of the Philippines who imposed martial law in order to retain power, who had opponents tortured or killed or tortured then killed, who embezzled billions of dollars from his dirt-poor country (you may remember his wife’s shoe collection) and who was eventually ousted by a revolution. Well, he was one of Paul’s clients. Marcos paid Paul’s firm about a million dollars a year to keep the US government onside. And it seems to have worked. Hundreds of millions of dollars of US aid propped the Marcos regime up for years. Well done, Paul.
Here’s a trickier one: remember Mobutu? Oh bravo, President Mobutu of Zaire. Africa’s never been short of brutal dictators but Mobutu is considered to have been right up there with its most spectacular. Whether it was his almost limitless embezzlement, or his chartering Concorde so his wife could go shopping in Paris, or the execution of his prime minister and three cabinet ministers before a crowd of 50,000, or his bid to have himself appointed president for life (they all try that one, from Mugabe to Chavez to Gaddafi to Papa Doc, partly because they’re addicted to power, but also because they know what will happen to them if they lose it) or ... but I don’t need to go on. Dictators are depressingly unoriginal.
Now, I don’t think it will surprise you to learn that Mobutu was another of Paul’s clients. Again the fees came to a million or so a year and helped to generate massive US aid and support. In 1983 Ronald Reagan called Mobutu ’’a voice of good sense and goodwill’’. Paul must have been so proud. One just hopes that he remembered to wash the blood off his hands after work each day.
And then there was Yanukovich. He was from the Russian-speaking east of Ukraine and in 2004 he was elected president of that country, only to see the result overturned because of massive voting fraud. But Yanukovich was not discouraged. With the support of the Kremlin, he stayed in politics and when he finally acquired power in 2010 he made sure that his main opponent went to prison and stayed there.
But, as Yanukovich tried to align Ukraine more and more with Russia, people rose against him and occupied Independence Square in Kiev. Yanukovich sent in the troops. Dozens of protesters died, but the protest continued. And in 2014 Yanukovich realised the game was up and fled the country in a helicopter sent by nice Mr Putin.
Ukraine was astonished at what he’d left behind. His residential estate included a mansion with a roof of pure copper, chandeliers worth $100,000 each, a golf course, a shooting range, a private zoo and the sort of gold leaf and rococo decoration that you’ll find in the penthouse suite of a famous tower in New York.
And yes, of course, Yanukovich was one of Paul’s clients. He paid Paul to organise his election campaign, and to refresh his image after the crimes of 2004. And clearly Paul did a good job, no doubt because of his long experience of dealing with dictators and embezzlers and murderers.
But the Yanukovich contract has not been good for Paul’s career. Recent investigations in the Ukraine have uncovered an alleged illegal payment to Paul of $12 million by Yanukovich’s political party.
And last year the Associated Press reported that Paul had secretly routed another couple of million dollars from that political party to other Washington lobbyists in order to conceal the party’s efforts to influence US foreign policy. If true, that would be illegal as well.
Paul, whose surname is Manafort, has denied any guilt. But the fuss has cost him his most significant client yet. Up to that point he’d been running the presidential campaign for the charming Mr Trump. O freedom’s beacon. O shining city on the hill.