Ed Gillespie: Counselor to the Presidential Library

Why, you might ask, would a president who is buried alive in an unwinnable Middle East war, a battle with his own party on Capitol Hill, and a mountain of crumbling popularity decide to tap a lobbyist and longtime Republican fundraiser to be his new White House counselor?

There's always a reason.

President Bush has just eighteen months left in his administration, and he needs to raise an estimated half-billion dollars to build that presidential library and think tank that will spend the rest of eternity trying to explain why the Iraq war wasn't a mistake.

Current law does not require presidential library foundations to reveal the names of their donors, but current law may change, and that makes it awkward for President Bush to fund his library with mega-donations from powerful people in Dubai and Saudi Arabia, as his father did. It would be so embarrassing if FBI computer programs tracking terrorist financing uncovered a stream of wire transfers from Abu Dhabi to SMU.

So what's a president to do?

Enter Ed Gillespie.

The Associated Press reports today that as a partner in the lobbying firm Quinn Gillespie & Associates, Gillespie lobbied the Senate last year on behalf of Microsoft, Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Tyson Foods, Safeway grocery stores, Entergy, Bank of America, and NBC Universal.

Lobbyists, if you've just arrived on the planet earth, make a living by having clients in the private sector and contacts in the government. They present their clients' legislative needs to their contacts, and they maintain their contacts by delivering campaign donations from their clients.

Ed Gillespie knows what everybody wants.

President Bush wants large, respectable, corporate donations to fund his library.

What do Microsoft, Verizon, AT&T, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Tyson Foods, Safeway, Entergy, B of A and NBC want?

We'll all find out together when they get it.

And five years from now, when their corporate logos are etched on the wall of the George W. Bush Presidential Library, no one will suspect a thing.

A clean getaway beats a legacy any day.


Copyright 2007

Editor's note: You might be interested to read the earlier post, "The president's motive in the ports deal."

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