Haley Barbour and his Watergate Problem

The New Republic's Blog:

"GAPS BETWEEN APPOINTMENTS":

Mississippi governor and famed influence-peddler Haley Barbour had an interesting response Thursday to the piece Brad Plumer and I wrote about his K-Street ties. He made the comment to the Christian news service OneNewsNow.com: (Strangely he wouldn't talk to the American Family Association about this - John Leek)

Governor Barbour is disputing a report from a liberal magazine that claims he used state aircraft in June to travel to Washington, DC, to meet with partners at his old lobbying firm.

Barbour, who says he has severed ties with Barbour Griffith & Rodgers, LLC, has been criticized by his Democratic challenger John Arthur Eaves for setting up a blind trust that his old firm pays into annually. The governor says the New Republic article is a "fraud."

"I'd never take the state plane to Washington or anywhere else unless it's on official government business," he says. "But there's no question, a lot of days when you're in Washington all day and you have gaps between appointments -- if you see the secretary of HHS at 8:00 in the morning and you don't see the secretary of commerce until 11:00 in the morning -- you know, you have gaps in your schedule."

Barbour says the New Republic is a "left-wing rag" that has been attacking him for years because he is a conservative who is pro-life and opposes homosexual "marriage."

I don't have a whole lot to add--other than to point out that, you know, Watergate could be said to have happened during "gaps between appointments." Well, okay, I do have one more thing to add: Barbour's point about seeing the secretary of HHS at 8:00 and the secretary of commerce at 11:00 sounds plausible in theory. But, on the day we saw him, he'd touched down at Dulles airport a few minutes after noon, then strolled into his old office building at 1 pm. Given that it takes about 45 minutes to drive from Dulles to downtown Washington, that must have been an awfully quick meeting at HHS.

P.S. Notice, also, how quickly Barbour pivots from his lobbying-firm connections to abortion and gay marriage. It's enough to make Tom Frank blush.

--Noam Scheiber