John McCain, who is famous for having no truck with lobbyists but who somehow has them oozing out of his ears anyway, has once again been embarrassed by the lobbyists he has truck with.

Just last week, my friends, John McCain picked Doug Goodyear, CEO of the Washington-based DCI Group lobbying/consulting/PR firm, to be his national convention manager. Michael Isikoff of Newsweek, who has some decidedly old-fashioned notions about journalism, decided to do some due diligence (instead of just standing around and alternately applauding and fawning over McCain, which seems to be the current definition of political journalism for so many other political journalists these days). Isikoff looked up Goodyear, and reported on Saturday around noon that Goodyear’s PR firm has some PR issues:

Goodyear is CEO of DCI Group, a consulting firm that earned $3 million last year lobbying for ExxonMobil, General Motors and other clients.

Potentially more problematic: the firm was paid $348,000 in 2002 to represent Burma’s military junta, which had been strongly condemned by the State Department for its human-rights record and remains in power today. Justice Department lobbying records show DCI pushed to “begin a dialogue of political reconciliation” with the regime. It also led a PR campaign to burnish the junta’s image, drafting releases praising Burma’s efforts to curb the drug trade and denouncing “falsehoods” by the Bush administration that the regime engaged in rape and other abuses.

In very short order — by 5.p.m. the same day, to be precise — Goodyear had resigned. Apparently (and this may come as news to some of you), even the Republican party believes that there are some pigs you shouldn’t be caught putting lipstick on for money. Or to be precise, there are some pigs that if you’re caught putting lipstick on them for money, you shouldn’t be seen to have a leadership role in a political campaign. Not a presidential campaign, at least.

(Incidentally, Goodyear claims the resignation was entirely his own idea, and he did it because it was “unambiguously the right thing to do”. Seriously, the guy who shilled for a brutal, repressive regime is standing up and telling us what is the right thing to do? That’s what it takes to be successful in the PR/lobbying business, huh?

Funny thing is that Mr. Goodyear still thinks that defending his firm’s association with the Burmese junta is unambiguously the right thing to do: “It was our only foreign representation, it was for a short tenure, and it was six years ago.”)

Goodyear’s entirely voluntary resignation wasn’t the end of the story, though. McCain’s amazing, magical truck-but-no-truck relationship with lobbyists is no one-trick pony but a veritable cornucopia of delights, the gift that keeps on giving.

Ironically, Goodyear was chosen for the post after the McCain campaign nixed another candidate, Paul Manafort, who runs a lobbying firm with McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis. The prospect of choosing Manafort created anxiety in the campaign because of his long history of representing controversial foreign clients, including Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. More recently, he served as chief political consultant to Viktor Yanukovich, the former Ukrainian prime minister who has been widely criticized for alleged corruption and for his close ties to Russia’s Vladimir Putin—a potential embarrassment for McCain, who in 2007 called Putin a “totalitarian dictator.” “The Ukrainian stuff was viewed as too much,” says one McCain strategist, who asked not to be identified discussing the matter.

So that’s your typical McCain campaign shortlist: a lobbyist with a long history of representing controversial repressive foreign regimes, and a lobbyist who represented a controversial repressive foreign regime only once?

Seriously, though, the McCain campaign actually vetted Manafort and Goodyear based on the clients they had represented? And the McCain campaign didn’t see any problem with Goodyear having represented the Burmese junta? So the problem wasn’t that Goodyear has cheerfully shilled for a brutal, repressive regime, the problem was that cyclone Nargis happened to bring their brutal repressiveness into the limelight once more.

And then this story stood on tiptoe and kissed McCain on the cheek one more time. It turns out that St. John had another DCI Group lobbyist working for him. Marc Ambinder asked Saturday night:

What becomes now of Doug Davenport, the DCI lobbying czar who is a campaign regional manager? A campaign spokesperson referred comment to Davenport, who did not immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment. As the head DCI lobbyist, Mr. Davenport would have been directly in charge of the Myanmar account during 2002.

On Sunday, the McCain campaign regretfully announced the resignation of Doug Davenport.

Funny how on McCain’s campaign trail — McCain being the guy who has no truck with lobbyists, remember? — you can’t seem to turn over a rock without uncovering a lobbyist with ties to a brutal totalitarian regime.

Also, maybe at some point somebody will get around to asking John McCain why the party that proudly advocates and defends torture and other abuses sees anything wrong with engaging in advocacy for a government that engages “in rape and other abuses”? No doubt, the Republican party does it in a good cause. But maybe the Burmese junta considers it a good cause too?