I had a chance to sit down with senior McCain campaign advisor Charlie Black Thursday evening in Milwaukee, WI.
He's come under criticism by the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee because of his lobbyist background.
Watch what he has to say above or read about it below.
I believe it's overblown.
People who have engaged in representation of corporations and unions and non profits and the Girl Scouts and the AMA - have been involved in politics for a long time. Most lobbyists are also partisans who grew up in one party or the other and like to participate in politics.
The question is: do you, by doing political work, gain some advantage over somebody else because of your closeness to the candidate? Well the way to solve that is to simply have a rule that you don't lobby the candidate. I personally have had that rule going back to Reagan days and Sen. McCain's now instituted that rule for his campaign. But it's a little bit hypocritical on the part of Sen. Obama and the liberal organizations that are pushing this because I think they realize it's a phony issue, and I don't believe it's one that will get a lot of attention from the voters when they're worried about being able to keep their mortgages and whether their taxes are going to be increased, whether they're going to have a job and how they're going to pay for their healthcare.