Among the signature innovations Paul Manafort and his colleagues brought to politics was the invention of the “double-breasted” firm. As Franklin Foer described it in his Atlantic cover story, “Whereas other firms had operated in specialized niches—lobbying, consulting, public relations—Black, Manafort and Stone bundled all those services under one roof, a deceptively simple move that would eventually help transform Washington. Time magazine deemed the operation ‘the ultimate supermarket of influence peddling.’”
In his conversation with Caroline Kitchener, Frank put it this way:
Manafort and his firm had this genius idea that they could create an operation that had a political consulting arm that got politicians elected, and a lobbying arm that would turn around and lobby the very politicians that they'd helped get elected. That's the double-breasted nature of it all, which poses an inherent conflict of interest.
To be a political consultant is a very intimate thing. When you run a campaign, in order to do that effectively, you need to know all the vulnerabilities of your opponent. Paul Manafort's firm technically set up two different firms, so they had the same principles, and they shared an office space, yet legally, they were organized as two separate entities.
In at least one race, Manafort’s “double-breasted” firm had access to the inner secrets of every candidate running, as Foer’s story details:
Demand for its services rose to such heights that the firm engineered a virtual lock on the 1988 Republican primary. Lee Atwater became the chief strategist for George H. W. Bush; Black worked with Bob Dole; Stone advised Jack Kemp. A congressional staffer joked to Time, “Why have primaries for the nomination? Why not have the candidates go over to Black, Manafort and Stone and argue it out?”
Paul Manafort worked for countries as varied as Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, and Nigeria. What makes a country a good prospective client for a lobbyist like him?
Frank told Caroline Kitchener that it comes down to a few factors:
- Foreign aid: “First, if you're in one of these countries, odds are you're getting some foreign aid from the United States. You know you need to have a lobbyist on the ground in Washington to help keep that flowing.”
- Ego: “Second, you probably are pretty vain. So when a consultant like Paul Manafort comes in and spruces up your image and gets you interviews with famous Western reporters who write fawning profiles in The Washington Post ... that feels pretty good.”
- Available cash: “Also, you have infinite resources to spend on somebody like Paul Manafort, and so if a consultant comes to you and says, ‘Hey, I can help you with X, Y, and Z problem,’ you think, ‘This is a drop in a bucket for me.’”
Among Paul Manafort’s biggest successes was helping to get Viktor Yanukovych elected President of Ukraine. Was this Putin’s bidding? Not exactly, Frank suggested. But to understand how Putin and Manafort’s interests intersect, he said, it helps to first understand the geopolitics of Ukraine:
Ukraine is divided into two parts. The western part is ethnically Ukrainian, speaks the Ukrainian language, and has a strong sense of national identity. Then there's an eastern part of the country that identifies more with Russian language and culture. Ukrainian politics was always going to polarize in these two directions.
Manafort steps into the equation in 2004. There's a political candidate called Viktor Yanukovych who comes from eastern Ukraine. When he first runs for president, before Manafort shows up on the scene, all of his political consultants came from Russia. Vladimir Putin reportedly contributed hundreds of millions to his campaign. Russia thought of Ukraine as its backyard and a natural part of its political orbit, and so it was always trying to both commercially and politically win influence there.
That said, the Russian politicians Manafort was working with weren't besties with Putin. They've resented being dictated to by Putin, and there was always some tension.
In 2014, you get to this key moment in Ukraine when the country is about to align with the European Union. Manafort is sincerely pushing them toward the European Union, and then Putin steps in and basically bribes Ukraine to align with Russia. People protest, and it seems like the Russians advised the Ukrainian politicians to massacre the protesters.
This is a way of saying that Putin and Manafort were working basically for the same team. And yet I think it would be a little bit of a stretch to say that he was doing Putin's bidding in that precise sort of way.
Much of the color from Frank’s cover story came from personal SMS exchanges between Manafort and his daughter. That material had apparently been made public by Ukrainian hackers who had political motives. Using those texts in the story posed a moral challenge for Frank:
There was this hesitancy that most journalists had, and I share, about using purloined material that comes from somebody who really doesn't deserve to be in public view. So I did wrestle with it.
I ultimately made the decision that I was writing a psychological profile of a very important man, and that if I judiciously used those text messages, I could help fill in gaps in the narrative. I did my best to confirm that information elsewhere. We're in a moral gray zone with this material.
Republicans in Congress, says Atlantic senior editor David Frum, will do everything in their power to protect President Donald Trump. That’s because this success is likely to be their success. When a president has above a 50 percent approval rate, his party loses an average of 13 seats in the midterms, but when he polls below 50 percent, it’s 37 seats. Caroline Kitchener asked Frum if there will come a point in the Russia investigation when congressional Republicans will stop worrying about protecting their party as a whole, and start worrying about protecting themselves.
Republicans are caught in a trap. They don't know how bad the scandal is. They have imaginations same as anybody else. I remember that famous joke that Kevin McCarthy told: Vladimir Putin pays two people, Dana Rohrabacher and Donald Trump, and everybody laughed, and Paul Ryan hushed them up. They don't make those jokes anymore… at least not anywhere there's a microphone. But they get it. And they say, okay, where does this story go? What happens? There's a saying from the Watergate days: "The cover-up is worse than the crime." To which we say, it depends on what crime it is. Sometimes, if a crime is bad enough, a cover-up is your best option.
In his new book, Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic, The Atlantic's David Frum argues that the Trump administration has put American democracy at risk. A Masthead member asked what he, as an American citizen, can do about it.
If you're carrying a smartphone, and if you are a reader of The Atlantic, which you probably are, you should remember that you're not just a news consumer, you're also a news publisher, an information publisher. What you share, what you tell people, can potentially make a big difference. You can make a video that can instantly reach everyone on Earth with a cell phone … Walter Cronkite never had that kind of reach, and certainly not that kind of speed. Take that power seriously, and use it responsibly.
Recently there was a plane crash in Russia; seventy-something people were tragically killed. Many of them have very ordinary, common Russian names, and there were people who looked through the manifests, saw a name that they thought they recognized as being an important person in the story, and then tweeted it and put it on Facebook, spreading false news. So, don't be that person. Be a firewall against spreading false news. Be your own quality control desk for information.
It’s also important to look for common ground. I'm not recommending that you take day trips into coal country and lecture people about why they're wrong. But there are a lot of people who are more or less reachable by you, who have slightly different values, and I think just that one-to-one conversation is productive. There are a lot of people who will say, "My taxes are lower. I don't like the way the President treats women, but my taxes are lower." It's not a matter of changing their mind. It's a matter of changing their weighting of issues.