What is it about John McCain and the letter 'P'? What's the connection between Nancy Pfotenhauer, energy adviser (formerly employed by Koch Industries) to the McCain campaign, who's name means paw-wacker in German, and the selection of a vice presidential running mate, who offers a bounty to hunters to bring her the front paws of wolves? Even if one were writing a trash novel, so many co-incidences would be over the top. But, there they are. I'm not making this stuff up.

That McCain himself has been much taken with his POW experience has now been covered ad nauseam--as has his career as a pilot, which ended with a good soaking in a Hanoi pond and five years as a guest in the Hoa Lo Prison in Vietnam. His subsequent decision to give up on a career in the Navy and take up politics in Phoenix is also well known. One needn't be superstitious to consider starting a new life with a young heiress in a city named for the bird rising from the ashes a propitious sign.

Indeed, the rise was relatively swift and two terms in Congress went by quickly, as did the first two years of McCain's twenty-two year Senate career. And then, everything slowed perceptibly. For, despite his having courted the Arizona press, when Poppy Bush fixed on a running mate in 1988, it was the scion of the Pulliam press empire, J. Danforth Quayle, who got the call, not John McCain. The selection of the Senator from Indiana came as a surprise to most of the nation, not unlike the Palin pick in the current election cycle, though not much notice seems to have been taken that Quayle was an Arizona native and spiritual descendant of Barry Goldwater, the original conservative.

That the scion of a newspaper family was eventually skewered in the press for misspelling 'potato' now seems ironic. But, perhaps it was just that connection which motivated the publicists to make much of it. Be that as it may, Dan Quayle established a sort of precedent in another way:

When the candidate finally chose his running mate the wise men and women of the media focused on the running mate's wealth, his boyish good looks, and his gift of gab - but some of them remarked tartly that he seemed a little light on substance. Nevertheless, the pundits agreed unanimously that his charm and looks would play well with the ladies.

John Edwards in 2004, right?

Guess again: Dan Quayle, the man for 1988.

As it happens, Dan Quayle had considerably more experience in politics, more heft in foreign policy than John Edwards has, but the press savaged him mercilessly. I recall a famous correspondent for a major Washington newspaper - not mine - remarking confidently to a crowded elevator that "the media will bounce Dan Quayle off the ticket before the delegates leave New Orleans."

So Pretty Boy Quayle beat out John McCain for the Vice Presidency in 1988 and in 2004 it was John Edwards' turn. Of course, John McCain denied that the maverick had ever considered it being John Kerry's running mate. Besides, the Swiftboat Veterans and POWs for Truth were all set to savage the Democrat.

In any case, 1989 saw the eruption of the Keating Five scandal, more devastating to John McCain than his POW experience had been.

Then in 1992 along came Ross Perot, a McCain nemesis from way back because of the way he'd dumped his first wife to marry the beer heiress. Perot must have at least considered that his candidacy would split the Republican vote. A game-changing election.

Having been returned to the Senate in 1992, by 1994 John McCain was involved in a new project, the New Citizenship Project:

The watchdog group "Media Transparency, the Money Behind the Media"4, reports 47 grants totalling $2,722,900 given to the New Citizenship Project from 1994 through 2001.

and that group eventually gave birth to the Project for a New American Century. John McCain was not one of the original signatories to the establishing document.

Perhaps modesty accounts for John McCain distancing himself from some of his significant achievements, such as his co-sponsorship of the

Iraq Liberation Act—drafted by PNAC—which decreed “regime change” in Iraq to be U.S. policy, and which appropriated $97 million in U.S. military aid to the Iraqi National Congress (INC)

as well as his chairmanship of the International Republican Institute for the last fifteen years and the Supervisory Committee of the Media Support Center Foundation. On the other hand, he probably wants to distance himself from Stephen Payne, a close associate of his policy adviser Randy Scheunemann, because Payne's exposure in a sting operation must be rather embarrassing.

McCain’s camp has gone to great lengths to distance itself from Payne, a business friend of President George and VP Dick Cheney, and to downplay the role Scheunemann played in his lobbying efforts for Payne. (USA Today reports that Orion Strategies, a management consulting firm founded by Scheunemann, “earned $540,000 from its foreign clients” over the 12 months ended Dec. 1, 2007, and “received $56,250 last year from March to July from McCain.”)

But it's worth pointing out that as chair of the "supreme governing body" of the Media Support Center Foundation (MSCF) in Kyrgyzstan, McCain oversaw a nonprofit organized under Kyrgyzstan law that was sponsored (and funded, in part) by the Washington, D.C.-based Freedom House.

The MSCF's primary mission is to print propaganda, a useful tool in any effort to affect the course of government in a nation. The fact that MSCF's board initially included members of Akayev's government at the time of his reign only makes sense, since the printing press was a Kyrgyzstan entity. It's all part of that big game — guessing who's on whose side.

But McCain's links to Freedom House really can't be questioned, since he himself admits he served as chair of the MSCF, a Freedom House creation. And one of his top policy advisors, Scheunemann, did lobbying work for a Bush/Cheney insider (Payne), the very person who offered to set up the quid-pro-quo deal for Akayev.

Facts provided by Freedom House itself state that:

The opening of the press on November 14 2003 marks the culmination of almost two years of work by Freedom House. The press ... was funded by the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights & Labor. The Open Society Institute and the Royal Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway provided additional support.

The Media Support Center Foundation, a Kyrgyz non-profit organization, will operate the printing house. A broad-based Board of Directors, chaired by U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ), directs the foundation. ...

Why would the State Department fund a foreign printing press if there was no U.S. objective involved? Freedom House itself kicked in money for the MSCF effort — at least $39,000, according to its Form 990 filing with the IRS for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2005 (the most recent year for which such figures are available).

Lest you think I've run out of 'p's, given John McCain's oft-stated position on earmarks and pork, I think we have to conclude that setting up a printing press in Kyrgyzstan can't possibly be considered PORK.

But think about this.

If the Russian or Chinese governments set up a state-funded printing press in the U.S. and started printing newspapers that stirred up the populace against the existing government, how would that be characterized?

Freedom House is technically a nonprofit, though of a special brand funded almost entirely by government money. And its MSCF project was chaired by a sitting U.S. Senator — the face of the U.S. government.

It would seem that not only did George W. Bush provide little direction to the executive agencies under his jurisdiction, but a significant number of foreign policy initiatives seem to have been undertaken by members of Congress and non-governmental organizations.