Maverick rides again

Voters requested in 1986 that Mark White clear out of the governor's office, meaning McKinnon had to hunt for a job again.

As McKinnon tried to figure out his game plan, he received a phone call from a consultant named Dick Morris asking him to be press secretary for then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton. Another call came around the same time, a similar offer from Texas Land Commissioner Garry Mauro, the Democrat Bush would trounce in 1998 with McKinnon's help. McKinnon turned down both offers, instead choosing to work for the campaign of Buddy Roemer, a Democratic congressman wanting to be governor of Louisiana.

McKinnon had other opportunities to work for Clinton, but turned them down. James Carville called him in the spring of 1992 asking him to work for the campaign in Little Rock. Paul Begala rang in 1993 to ask McKinnon to consider doing press for then-U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich.

Had he signed on with Clinton, McKinnon might have been the guy defending the president on the Sunday talk shows. Or he might have been the guy with the lucrative tell-all book deal. It would be easy to conclude that McKinnon hooked up with Bush out of regret for not hooking up with Clinton. But he is adamant when he says that his decisions not to work for Clinton are among the best he has ever made in his life.

"I want to work with people I can respect," McKinnon says. "I had reservations about Clinton, and they have been affirmed in spades. He's been incredibly disloyal to the people around him. You can look at the trail of the people who have served the president who he has sort of discarded and thrown away. It's a graveyard of people who sacrificed a lot for him.

"One of the things I admire about Governor Bush and the whole Bush family is [that] the loyalty to their friends and staff is deep, real, and genuine."

Dean Rindy, McKinnon's estranged former business partner, suggests that McKinnon's admiration for the Bushes is a recent epiphany. In 1988 McKinnon worked in Washington for a political consulting firm that did the media for President Bush's Democratic opponent, Michael Dukakis. "The truth of the matter is, the firm did the race, so I can't disassociate myself from it, but I was a junior guy," McKinnon says.

Rindy says that when he and McKinnon worked together, McKinnon often expressed a lack of respect for the president. "He had nothing but contempt for George W. Bush's father. He thought that George Bush was just a doofus. We talked about politics all the time. I hesitate to quote exactly from eight or nine years ago, but I can tell you he was severely critical of George Bush and of the Republican Party. Or claimed to be. He is now in bed with people he used to ridicule."

McKinnon contends that he believed, even back then, that the Bushes were decent people, but he adds: "Yeah, you know, back then I was drinking the Democratic Kool-Aid."

Now, Mark McKinnon is sipping fortune from a chalice.

"There's no bigger credential a political consultant can put on his résumé," says McDonald, the Austin political consultant who defends McKinnon. "He's getting to do every political hack's ultimate challenge. He's in the game. He may not make it to the end, but it doesn't matter. He has his shot."

McKinnon credits Bush with restoring his faith in politics. The list of politicians he respected had been whittled down to a few, Lanier and Bullock being those he names most often. McKinnon says he liked how they were both so self-assured, which allowed them to make decisions independent of outside influence. He says he sees the same trait in Bush.

Lanier says he is convinced McKinnon is working for Bush for no reason other than that he believes in him.

"I think he's being absolutely 100 percent true to himself," says Lanier, a Democrat who was convinced by McKinnon and Bullock to endorse Bush for re-election in 1998. "He has gone to work for a guy who he thinks -- and I think -- is a very decent person and who will be good for the country if elected. Ten years from now, he is going to be able to look back and be very proud of the decision he has made. And I know that's going to be more important to him than any labels or anyone else's opinion."

McKinnon won't speculate on what he will do when this job is finished. He says he has no great desire to work in partisan Washington -- even if there is a Bush White House. He has an option to return to the Austin-based political consulting firm he left when he took the Bush job.

Other possibilities appear to be unlimited. He could be hired as the official videographer of the Bush administration and maybe have his work displayed for eternity at a George W. Bush presidential library. Or he could get out of politics again entirely and become a documentary filmmaker. He admits to having a half-shot documentary squirreled away somewhere. Goodness knows he would be able to find investors for any project he wants to do. All he would have to do is go down the list of contributors to the Bush campaign.

"No matter what happens," McKinnon says, "this will have been a great professional and personal experience for me."

And the future?

"I believe so strongly in Governor Bush," McKinnon says, "that I would cut the lawn at the Mansion if he asked me to."