Paul Manafort -- Great American?

[septimus]

I had never heard of Paul Manafort until 2016, so I found the Atlantic bio of him rather shocking. He was an important trendsetter in American politics long before 2016. Yet I see only one SDMB thread with his name in the title: a brief one from 2016.

From [James A. ] Baker [III, in 1976], he learned the art of ostentatious humility, how to use the knife to butter up and then stab in the back. “He was studying at the feet of the master,” Jeff Bell, a Reagan campaign aide, remembers.
…
[Manafort completely transformed Washington lobbying. There were only a few dozen registered lobbyists circa 1970. By the 1990’s there were several thousands.]
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.” Fred Wertheimer, a good-government advocate, described this expansive approach as “institutionalized conflict of interest.”
The linkage of lobbying to political consulting—the creation of what’s now known as a double-breasted operation—was the real breakthrough. Manafort’s was the first lobbying firm to also house political consultants. One venture would run campaigns; the other would turn around and lobby the politicians whom their colleagues had helped elect.
… In 1984, the firm reached across the aisle… Some members of the firm worked for Democratic Senate candidates even as operatives down the hall worked for their Republican foes. “People said, ‘It’s un-American,’ ” Kelly told me. “ ‘They can’t lose. They have both sides.’ I kept saying, ‘How is it un-American to win?’ ” This sense of invincibility permeated the lobbying operation too. When Congress passed tax-reform legislation in 1986, the firm managed to get one special rule inserted that saved Chrysler-Mitsubishi $58 million; it wrangled another clause that reaped Johnson & Johnson $38 million in savings. Newsweek pronounced the firm “the hottest shop in town.”
… 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?” Manafort cultivated this perception. In response to a questionnaire in The Washington Times, he declared Machiavelli the person he would most like to meet.
…
[Manafort’s quest for money, power and glory lead him to make his operation world-wide]
All of the money Congress began spending on anti-communist proxies represented a vast opportunity. Iron-fisted dictators and scruffy commandants around the world hoped for a share of the largesse. To get it, they needed help refining their image, so that Congress wouldn’t look too hard at their less-than-liberal tendencies. Other lobbyists sought out authoritarian clients, but none did so with the focused intensity of Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly. The firm would arrange for image-buffing interviews on American news programs; it would enlist allies in Congress to unleash money. Back home, it would help regimes acquire the whiff of democratic legitimacy that would bolster their standing in Washington.
… In one proposal, reported in The New York Times in 1988, the firm advertised its “personal relationships” with officials and promised to “upgrade” back channels “in the economic and foreign policy spheres.” No doubt it helped to have a friend in James Baker, especially after he became the secretary of state under Bush. “Baker would send the firm clients,” Kelly remembered. “He wanted us to help lead these guys in a better direction.”
But moral improvement never really figured into Manafort’s calculus. “Generally speaking, I would focus on how to bring the client in sync with western European or American values,” Kelly told me. “Paul took the opposite approach.”
… The firm’s most successful right-wing makeover was of the Angolan guerrilla leader Jonas Savimbi, a Maoist turned anti-communist insurgent, whose army committed atrocities against children and conscripted women into sexual slavery. During the general’s 1986 trip to New York and Washington, Manafort and his associates created what one magazine called “Savimbi Chic.” Dressed in a Nehru suit, Savimbi was driven around in a stretch limousine and housed in the Waldorf-Astoria and the Grand Hotel, projecting an image of refinement.

[et cetera]

[Moriarty]

I hope he dies locked in a cage.

[Rick_Kitchen]

@Moriarty

I hope he dies locked in a cage.

With a rabid, homosexual wolverine.

[Lamoral]

The guy is the definition of a shady apparatchik. There isn’t anything “great” about him, he’s a weasel like Roger Stone, but at least Stone is a quirky character, like something from a Wes Anderson movie. The same can’t be said about Manafort.

[dolphinboy]

He’s a world-class grifter, just like his former close friend in the White House.