I can understand why John McCain would be demanding (former) FEC Chair David Mason’s head. After all, before Bush did fire Mason, the FEC Chair was poised to call McCain on his attempts to game the campaign finance system.
The White House today withdrew the nomination of “holdover” FEC Commissioner David Mason to serve as a Commissioner on the FEC.
The White House dumped Mason after President Bush had twice proposed Mason for the FEC in the last two and a half years, in December 2005 as a recess appointment and in January 2007 as a nominee to the FEC for Senate Confirmation.
The only apparent reason for President Bush to drop Commissioner David Mason at this stage, an FEC candidate he had twice proposed for the Commission, is to prevent him from casting an adverse vote against Senator McCain on important enforcement questions pending at the Commission. The questions deal with Senator McCain’s request to withdraw from the presidential primary public financing system and the consequences of a loan the McCain campaign took out and the collateral provided for the loan.
Under these circumstances, President Bush’s dumping of Mason can only be viewed as a bald-faced and brazen attempt to wrongly manipulate an important enforcement decision by the nation’s campaign finance enforcement agency.
So I’m not surprised McCain called for FEC Chair David Mason’s head rather than SEC Chair Christopher Cox’s head. It was a predictable unconscious slip, one that probably happened because McCain was thinking about scapegoats he could attack to cover up his own complicity and screw-ups.
But I did think I’d be nice and remind McCain that he already got David Mason fired.