Will this hurt him?
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/11/mccain.airbus.ap/index.html
I can see him losing a lot of votes in the rust belt areas and among the defense community.
It’s a funny relationship you Dems have with no-bid contracts…
"Democrats continue to argue in favor of no-bid military contracts. They are slamming McCain for arguing against a no-bid contract for Boeing, on the grounds that some of his aides lobbied for Airbus after the corrupt Boeing tanker deal was shot down.
The misleading lede in today’s New York *Times *story buckles under the explanation it offers a few paragraphs down:
McCain, the Republican presidential nominee in waiting, has been a key figure in the Pentagon’s yearslong attempt to complete a deal on the tanker. McCain helped block an earlier tanker contract with Boeing and prodded the Pentagon in 2006 to develop bidding procedures that did not exclude Airbus…
“All I asked for in this situation was a fair competition,‘’ he told reporters Monday at Lambert Field in St. Louis, home of a Boeing fighter jet plant.
On Friday, he defended his aggressive oversight: ‘‘I never weighed in for or against anybody that competed for the contract. All I asked for was a fair process. And the facts are that I never showed any bias in any way against anybody — except for the taxpayer.’’
He made them hold a real competitive bidding process and saved the taxpayers billions of dollars? Shame on him! Next thing you know, they’ll be faulting him for helping some old lady cross the street.
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.”
This, the final paragraphs from your article, would seem to elevate McCain’s position. And the last two sentences (bold added by me) would seem to repudiate your title for this thread.
McCain prides himself in the role he played blocking an earlier version of the tanker deal that gave the contract to Boeing. As chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee and of an Armed Services subcommittee, McCain led an investigation that eventually helped kill that contract in 2004. A former Air Force official 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.
“I intervened in a process that was clearly corrupt,” McCain said Friday. “That’s why people went to jail.”
While McCain has praised Boeing for fixing its practices, his campaign said the experience prompted him to demand “a full, fair and open competition.” His letters – one to Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England in September 2006 and the other to Gates – were sent with that spirit in mind, Hazelbaker said Monday.
Once the rules were in place, Hazelbaker said, bidders submitted proposals, the Air Force reviewed them and the contract was awarded.
“That is a process that McCain, appropriately, had absolutely no role in,” she said.
Democrats are in favor of no-bid military contracts? That is news to me. I thought they were the ones slamming Halliburton and other companies for receiving no-bid contracts?
Do you mean to tell me that lobbyists do lobbying on behalf of their clients?
I am shocked, shocked I tell you. Next you will tell me that lawyers defend rapists, like, say, Hillary Clinton did.
Now that you’ve all vented…anyone care to try and answer the question?
Will this hurt him?
Not a chance this hurts him. You mentioned the rust belt and the defense interests that would be the votes at risk here? A couple of thoughts - first, this is a very small story and it is a very long time to November. You’re nuts if you think this story will stay in the collective voter’s memory that long. And if it does, it will be because this is the worst dirt your team can find on McCain, and we both know that there will be more attempted smears between now and November. Second, you really think the defense interests will vote for either Obama or Clinton over McCain? I think that voting block solidly belongs to him. The rust belt votes are up in the air for both parties right now, but not over this issue. I think the general economy and how successfully the tax and trade messages of each candidate gets communicated to the rust belt states will be more influential to that demographic than this manufactured story is.
Interestingly, Washington state, the state directly impacted by this lost contract, is currently polling a few points to McCain over both Obama and Clinton.
Boeing have very deep pockets and a very long memory. According to the story they are out to get him. I see an independent expenditure committee funded by Boeing called…SAVE AMERICAN JOBS or NO TO NAFTA AND OUTSOURCING…and lots of anti McCain commercials in Ohio and Pennsylvania and Michigan.
If Washington is trending to McCain, will it still be that way after Boeing is done with him?
Interestingly, Washington state, the state directly impacted by this lost contract, is currently polling a few points to McCain over both Obama and Clinton.
Where’d you get this poll? I seriously doubt Washington goes to McCain in November.
It was a Rasmussen poll. I’m not predicting a McCain win in Washington state in November, just sighting a poll for the sake of this discussion. I do anticipate that the red\blue states will be much different than they have been in 2000 and 2004.
**If Washington is trending to McCain, will it still be that way after Boeing is done with him? **
Boeing relocated its world headquarters to Chicago, and has a disgruntled workforce, in many departments. They’d probably cheer, for perverse reasons, any smackdown that the company received right now.
Boeing was caught, with the help of McCain (who bitched up a storm about shady contract awards), with its corporate *schwanz *hanging out in the wind, and a couple of people associated with it on the Boeing side went to prison. It also paid a huge fine.
Boeing has had a long history of problems with its tanker maintenance and repair programs, and the issue that came out in the previous award to Boeing, which was eventually tossed, was that the company was going to vastly overcharged the government for the lease, not even the purchase, of a number of tankers.
This award, to Northrup/Grumman and EADS, will lead to the purchase of more quality tankers, at a smaller net price, than would have been the case with Boeing’s bid. But, people here are right…the company sees an opportunity to get a punch in on McCain, its tormentor, and still possibly get the contract given to it anyways. The fact that the tanker building program will employ vast numbers of Americans here isn’t mentioned much.
T.
Matt, if you are predicting that McCain will lose the blue collar union vote in Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania I will jump right in and agree with you. Boeing can save their money. Some gossip today about Romney as his veep, mainly due to his strong showing in Michigan but I don’t see that happening. I think Michigan is a blue state this cycle. You don’t think lots of other companies will try to point out Clinton’s or Obama’s unfriendly business policies? I think it is a fair bet that there will be attack ads targeting both candidates on a bevy of issues come fall. I can’t see one ‘angle’ from Boeing making or breaking this race. Heck, just very recently there was that senate vote for immunity to the telecom industry, and McCain was the only candidate to vote for it. You don’t think the telecom’s have an interest in running pro McCain ads? I think the NAFTA discussion is far from over, and not counting Boeing’s interest I think the American people will vote to keep NAFTA, once the debate on NAFTA happens. To sum up, I just don’t see Boeing playing the part of kingmaker in a national election.
Oh, and another thing I just thought of. I know quite a few Boeing employees. Quite a few of them are ex military or have lots of experience working with the military and\or intelligence agencies. Every Boeing employee that I know holds a security clearance. I would guess that most of Boeing’s own employees are Republicans. Granted my circle of friends is a small sample, but the dozen Boeing folks I know here are rabid Rush listening, Coulter reading, card carrying Vast Right Wing Conspiracy Conservatives. No joke, they have the best BBQ’s.
It won’t hurt him because I don’t think most people give a shit.
This great article I just fell upon sheds some reality to this ‘outsourcing’ charge. Some interesting numbers to mull over too:
“When I wrote on the $35 billion contract to replenish the U.S. Air Force’s aging tanker fleet, few readers objected to John McCain’s role in scrapping Boeing’s proposed sweetheart deal to do the job in 2001. Although Democrats are now trying to make this an issue, McCain should be commended for stopping what would have been a massive waste of taxpayer money — and that’s probably the one issue where conservatives can really agree that McCain has a good record.
The main objection from readers, though, was that the United States should not depend on Airbus (EADS), a “foreign company,” to supply military planes. But now that Boeing is challenging the tanker contract, Business Week provides a piece on Boeing’s own place in globalization:
…Around 60% of the components of all Boeing commercial models are supplied by foreign contractors, and that rises to 70% on its new 787 Dreamliner…The Northrop-EADS tanker will be assembled at a facility in Mobile, Ala., but 40% of its components will be sourced from overseas. The rival Boeing aircraft would depend on non-U.S. suppliers for 15% of its parts.
In an age when Toyota and Subaru are major U.S. domestic producers of automobiles, and Americans hold substantial investments in foreign companies all over the world, the very opposition between “American” and “foreign” companies can be misleading. There is no all-American producer of military aircraft, and there’s no reason we can’t live with that.
What happens if a war threatens our ability to make airplanes in the most economically sensible way? We change our priorities, of course. We proved in World War II that our domestic industry could go from near-zero to 60 overnight. Aviation, the 41st largest industry in the United States in 1939, had become the largest of all by 1945. Before the war, we made 500 airplanes a month. We made 9,000 in the peak production month of March 1944.
Meanwhile, the Business Week article demonstrates the economic wisdom of international trade — it is vital both to Boeing’s profitability and to the jobs that Boeing creates in the United States.
The same principle applies in other sectors of manufacturing as well — in peacetime, the work done abroad serves as the handmaiden of a domestic industry. The negative proofs of this reality abound. When President Bush moved to protect domestic steel with tariffs, it was the Detroit automakers that suffered most — and suffer they have. Our tariffs against foreign sugar cost us more than ten thousand American confectionary jobs between 1998 and 2002. Because we put tariffs on ethanol, American grain and beef prices are through the roof, hurting not only consumers but also the businesses and jobs involved in processing and selling food.
When we protect America’s older and less technically advanced industries, we always do so at the expense of the newer and more advanced ones — those already in existence and those yearning to be born. The only nation in the world truly dedicated to self-sufficiency is North Korea (Kim Jong-Il calls it juche). That’s not an example we want to follow.”
Let’s not forget that Boeing OUTSOURCED most of the production of its whiz-bang 787 overseas…unfortunately they have spent more $$$ and attention on marketing and whining than oversight. They deserve to lose this tanker contract, pure and simple. Hopefully this can be a wake up call…