McCain's Boeing "Problem"

Supposedly, John Sidney McCain has a problem that may derail his bid for the presidency and it involves American aircraft builder Boeing. Let us turn our attention to the liberals at the Associated Press to explain Maverick's woes:

Boeing supporters in Congress are directing their wrath at McCain, the Arizona senator and nominee in waiting, for scuttling an earlier deal that would have let Boeing build the next generation of Air Force refueling tankers. Boeing now will miss out on a deal that it says would have supported 44,000 new and existing jobs at the company and suppliers in 40 states.

"I hope the voters of this state remember what John McCain has done to them and their jobs," said Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., whose state would have been home to the tanker program and gained about 9,000 jobs.

"Having made sure that Iraq gets new schools, roads, bridges and dams that we deny America, now we are making sure that France gets the jobs that Americans used to have," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill. "We are sending the jobs overseas, all because John McCain demanded it."

This sounds pretty bad, don't it? Well, you should know that just by quoting Rahm Emanuel that we are getting only a fraction of the real story.

The European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. and its U.S. partner, Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman, won a competition with Boeing Feb. 29 to build the refueling planes in one of the biggest Pentagon contracts in decades. The unexpected decision has sparked outrage from union halls to the halls of Congress over the impact on U.S. jobs, prestige and national security. EADS and Northrop say about 60 percent of their tanker will be built in the U.S.

McCain said he is keeping an open mind on the contract, but in the past he has boasted about his role in blocking an earlier version of the tanker deal that gave the contract to Boeing. The deal was killed in 2004 after a former Boeing executive improperly recruited an Air Force official while she was still overseeing contracts involving prospective Boeing deals. The former Air Force official, Darleen Druyun, and a top Boeing executive both served time in prison, and the scandal led to the departure of Boeing's chief executive and several top Air Force officials.

McCain has run ads touting his role in fighting "pork" such as the tanker project and cited the deal in a recent GOP debate.

"I saved the taxpayers $6 billion in a bogus tanker deal," he said.

Emphasis added.

Now, we can debate the "pork" statement...and if Democrats were serious about national defense -- and they aren't -- that is the angle they would take. The new tanker is important and vital to our military and as a former Navy pilot, John Sidney McCain ought to know that.

But let's get at what the real Democrat attack line is: John Sidney McCain is personally responsible for Americans losing jobs at Boeing. Never mind that Boeing officials broke the law and ultimately went to jail for it. Never mind the whole corruption of the deal making process that would have allowed Boeing to win that contract. What is important to remember is that the unions are losing more jobs...

By the way, that whole Boeing scandal was the impetus for Rep. Jim Jordan's Clean Up Government Act...

Public service commands the highest level of honesty and integrity. Corruption on the part of any public official tarnishes the dedicated public service of all officials and threatens the trust instilled in them by the American people. Perhaps the most notable case of public corruption is that of former Deputy Assistant Air Force Secretary Darleen Druyun. As the Air Force's number-two acquisition officer, Druyun admitted to favoring the Boeing Company in official contract negotiations at the same time she discussed possible future employment with the company. She confessed to agreeing to a highly inflated $20 billion price for 100 tanker planes leased to the government by Boeing, calling it a "parting gift" to the company. Druyun also rewarded Boeing with other excessive contracts while simultaneously seeking employment for herself and her son-in-law.

Druyun pled guilty to one count of conspiracy, which carries a maximum sentence of fifteen years imprisonment. Despite this, Druyun was sentenced to only nine months in a minimum-security prison, seven months of community confinement, 150 hours of community service, and a fine of $5,000.

Are Democrats really saying that Boeing should have been rewarded for this sort of behavior?

This isn't John Sidney McCain's problem at all...and if I am on his campaign staff, I relish the opportunity to smack around whichever Democrat brings this up.

UPDATE: I flagged this AP News Alert for inclusion in this post and then promptly forgot to add it:

WASHINGTON (AP) Boeing Co. says it will protest a $35 billion Air Force tanker award it lost.

Let's see how that protest turns out, shall we?

UPDATE 2: Now THIS might be a Boeing problem for McCain (This is CNN):

Top current advisers to Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign last year lobbied for a European plane maker that beat Boeing to a $35 billion Air Force tanker contract, taking sides in a bidding fight that McCain has tried to referee for more than five years.

Two of the advisers gave up their lobbying work when they joined McCain's campaign. A third, former Texas Rep. Tom Loeffler, lobbied for the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. while serving as McCain's national finance chairman.

EADS retained Ogilvy Government Relations and The Loeffler Group to lobby for the tanker deal last year, months after McCain sent two letters urging the Defense Department to make sure the bidding proposals guaranteed competition.

"They never lobbied him related to the issues, and the letters went out before they were contracted" by EADS, McCain campaign spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker said Monday.

According to lobbying records filed with the Senate, Loeffler Group lobbyists on the project included Loeffler and Susan Nelson, who left the firm and is now the campaign's finance director. Ogilvy lobbyist John Green, who was assigned the EADS work, recently took a leave of absence to volunteer for McCain as the campaign's congressional liaison.

"The aesthetics are not good, especially since he is an advocate of reform and transparency," said Richard Aboulafia, an analyst with the aerospace consulting firm Teal Group. "Boeing advocates are going to use this as ammunition."

This is why I continue to say that if you intend to rail against something like lobbyists, you ought not hang out with so many of them.

Do I think John Sidney McCain was influenced by lobbyists? No. He's too stubborn and pigheaded for that, but the appearance of undue influence is more than enough to justify taking a look at the situation a bit more closely.

Does Boeing deserve the contract anyway? Well, they've done great work for the military, but I have to think that they blew this deal with their shadow operation using Druyun. Ultimately, it comes down to whether or not Boeing thinks that the country and its national security interests are better served by a McCain adminstration or one of the Democratic "alternatives" currently on the table. I don't think that making a big fuss over this is in the best interests of the company or the nation, but that has never stopped a charter member of the military industrial complex before...

UPDATE 3: From that same CNN piece is the definitive McCain quote on the subject that I really think sums up the whole thing fairly well:

"I intervened in a process that was clearly corrupt," McCain said Friday. "That's why people went to jail."

It doesn't get any more clear than that...

UPDATE 4: In a post at NRO's The Corner (which includes a passage that clarifies that the EADS lobbyists worked on/for McCain AFTEr the Boeing deal got shot down), David Freddoso makes this very excellent point:

Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), who understandably wants to advocate for enriching a few people in his district at every other American taxpayer's expense, replies that...

...the field was ''tilted to Airbus'' because the Pentagon did not weigh European subsidies for Airbus in its deliberations — a decision he blamed on McCain. Everett, Wash., is where Boeing would perform much of the tanker work, and Dicks is a senior member of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee.

Why should European subsidies be a consideration at all? Or better: if anything, as I noted yesterday, we should welcome European subsidies for our military. We've earned them, haven't we? And since when is the U.S. military supposed to be a huge jobs program for Norm Dicks's district? Silly me, I thought that the military's purpose was to fight and win wars.

A most excellent point if I've ever heard one...

UPDATE 5: It's official with this AP News Alert:

WASHINGTON (AP) Boeing Co. files formal protest of a $35 billion Air Force tanker award it lost.

AFP has a story here that says that Boeing has filed their complaint with the General Accounting Office:

"Our analysis of the data presented by the Air Force shows that this competition was seriously flawed and resulted in the selection of the wrong airplane for the warfighter," Mark McGraw, vice president and program manager, Boeing Tanker Programs, said in a statement.

"We are exercising our right under the process for a GAO review of the decision to ensure that the process by which America's next refueling tanker is selected is fair and results in the best choice for the US warfighters and taxpayers."

With the filing of the protest, the contract is suspended until the GAO makes a decision on the matter.

Nobody likes sore losers...