David McKean ’86: A view from the Hill
Although his book, Tommy the Cork: Washington’s Ultimate Insider, from Roosevelt to Reagan, met with critical acclaim when it was released in October 2003, David McKean didn’t immediately set out on a promotional author’s tour. He was, at that time, preoccupied with a promotional tour of a different kind: John Kerry’s presidential campaign.
Biography is McKean’s sideline; for the past five years he has worked as Senator Kerry’s chief-of-staff. He likely would have assumed a top White House post had the Senator won the presidency, having also been a key campaign advisor and co-chair of Kerry’s transition team in the run-up to the election.
“It takes an enormous amount of work to effect a transition,” says McKean of the experience. “We had a great plan to implement a government.”
Reflecting back on the outcome of the election, McLean is blunt about what he considers a lost opportunity for the country.
“John Kerry would have been a truly great president.
“He’s enormously bright, engaged, thoughtful, and capable of handling the complexities facing this country. And he’s someone who believes you have to hold government accountable.
“That’s something [the Kerry campaign] failed to convey,” he adds, citing, as example, what he describes as a major distortion of the Senator’s post-Vietnam record by such groups as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. “He didn’t denigrate the troops, but sought to hold the government responsible for its actions.”
McKean wishes the campaign had been quicker to counter negative ads, but says he’s proud of his boss.
“He gave it his heart and soul. He won every debate. He was a great candidate.
“It remains a divided country, and I think the whole issue of running against a war-time president is difficult. The campaign was largely focused on Iraq and the war on terror, which are becoming synonymous.”
Democrats are disappointed, but shouldn’t be disheartened, he concludes. “No one’s given up.”
McKean has spent most of his career on Capitol Hill, working both as chief-of-staff to former Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy, II, and as a long-time aide to Senator Kerry. It was through his work as investigative counsel to the Senator on the Bank of Credit and Commerce International bankruptcy scandal of the early 1990s that McKean found a compelling subject in Clark Clifford, the famous Washington lobbyist and presidential advisor who was centrally implicated in the scandal. McKean left “the Hill” for a year and a half to write Friends in High Places with co-author Douglas Frantz.
“Running against a war-time president is difficult. The campaign was largely focused on Iraq and the war on terror.” David McKean
Tommy the Cork is the story of a Clifford contemporary, Thomas Corcoran, who McKean describes as the most influential lobbyist of his time. Having clerked for Justice Oliver Wendel Holmes after graduating from Harvard Law School, Corcoran came into the Roosevelt administration to work on financial reform in the 1930s.
“He became FDR’s de facto chief-of-staff, filling the power vacuum for Roosevelt in his administration,” McKean explains. “Roosevelt loved him. He was an ebullient, energetic figure–as well as a polarizing figure, as powerful people tend to be.”
No stranger to lobbyists, McKean credits Corcoran for laying the groundwork for the profession, building a clientele after World War II that included such clients as Pan American Airlines and the Taiwanese government.
“He placed literally hundreds of lawyers around Washington. That’s what made him so influential–he knew people everywhere.
“Clifford and Corcoran shared a deep knowledge of the issues they lobbied on and spent a lot of time cultivating the personal relationships that mattered dearly in those days. They both spent a lot of time as statesmen behind the scenes, too.”
Lobbying has changed, and the likes of his subjects are not around anymore, notes McKean.
“In Corcoran’s day, he could walk the halls of the Senate and pop into any senator’s office. Now it’s much more difficult. Power is more diffuse; staffs are huge. Lobbyists are highly specialized. It’s still a huge industry, but no one person has the level of influence that Corcoran or Clifford may have had.”
These days it is the political consultants, such as Karl Rove, Robert Shrum, and Dick Morris, who yield the greatest influence, notes McKean, who is looking to that field for his next book.
“I want to look at how these people have international as well as domestic reach and influence.”
In spite of a lost election, the most “divided and toxic atmosphere” he’s ever seen in Washington, and even the fact that his last book took six years to research and write, McKean has no plans to give up his regular job as gatekeeper for Senator Kerry. The primary perk?
“Debating issues with the Senator. He has a great mind and loves to get to the bottom of things.”