The Perfect Villain

I bought The Perfect Villain: John McCain and the Demonization of the Lobbyist Jack Abramoff by Gary S. Chafetz a while ago because a friend knows the author. I finally got around to reading it. It would have made a lot more sense to read it before the election, but at that point I didn't need any extra reasons to dislike McCain.

The book describes some of Abramoff's life and work as a lobbyist. The point of the book is to try to show that while he may not have been a great guy and may have cross a few lines, he was no where near the villain that McCain and the Washington Post made him out to be. And that McCain and the Post bent the truth and hid evidence to make Abramoff look worse. My spidey sense was kicking in as I read the book. Partially I'm just wary of any book that comes out against a presidential candidate not long before an election. And the other part is it suggests the truth is rather different from my impression of what is generally accepted (which doesn't mean it is wrong, but requires more supporting evidence). Neither of these is enough to make me think it is false, just enough to make me not sure. Normally with stuff like that I can look it up online and reasonably quickly get at least some sense about it. But I'm coming up with very little on this book. It almost seems like no one read it or no one cares. If anyone knows anything about it or can find any better info I'd appreciate it.

Anyway, even if you ignore the claims about McCain and the Washington Post it still has some interesting info since it details several examples of how lobbyists work. One good example was an Indian tribe that funneled money through charities Abramoff had some control over to a christian right leader so he could lead an anti-gambling movement in a neighboring state to prevent other tribes from starting casinos and creating competition. All of the stories also seemed to involve getting his clients to make large donations to key lawmakers' favorite charities and setting up fact finding missions for senators that happen to involve trips to famous golf courses.

If Chafetz is right about the whole thing then it's that much more to dislike about McCain. But I'm not sure I'd feel that different about Abramoff. Partially because he was doing a lot of questionable stuff. But even more than that, because he plead guilty so I don't feel any conflict about the possibility that he was wrongly convicted since he didn't go to trial.