Lobbyist Who Was Lee Atwater's Mentor Is A Senior Advisor for McCain's Campaign

He started his lobbying firm in 1980, as he said, “thinking someday I’m going to need a real job in between campaigns.” Black, Manafort and Stone — it would later expand to include Mr. Atwater, who died in 1991 — became one of the most aggressive and well-connected Republican lobbying shops in Washington.

The firm was so entwined with the Reagan White House that administration officials gave it a heads-up so it could cancel its contract with a client, President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, two hours before Reagan withdrew his support.

So clearly Mr. Black is one of those people who think that Lobbyists should be bringing big business and overseas leaders' money and interests into the halls of American power. 

Still more:

[Black's lobbying group] became bipartisan in the mid-1980s, and its political consulting wing was so successful that its partners frequently worked for both sides in a race.

Hey, and guess what!  Something like that happened this year too.  Guess who's lobbying company owns Blacks?

If you guessed Mark Penn, you'd be correct!  Let's show em what they won! 

I'd be suspicious about the wads of negative campaigning from both Hillary's campaign and McCains, and a possible bleeding over from one to the other, but even since Penn left the nastiness has stayed in the Clinton's group, though we have been assured by many sources, that this isn't Hillary.

Now, how about that tobacco angle. The Times reporter notes:

Mr. Black says Mr. McCain has never given his clients preferential treatment. In the late 1990s, he pointed out, Philip Morris and other tobacco companies fought against what called their newspaper ads called “the McCain Tobacco Tax.”