McCain convention manager quits over Myanmar ties

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May 1, 2008:

John McCain's campaign has settled on a veteran Republican public relations executive to help run the Republican convention in September.

Doug Goodyear, a co-founder and the current CEO of the DCI group, will serve as McCain's manager in St. Paul, according to Republican sources familiar with the decision.

He'll work in concert there with Maria Cino, a longtime GOP operative who is the convention's president and CEO.

Yesterday, 9 days later:

The PR executive John McCain just tapped to help run the GOP convention quit today after a report that his firm once represented the Burmese junta that is now doing little to relieve its people from the devastation incurred by this week’s cyclone.

Doug Goodyear, CEO of the DCI Group, said in a statement issued by the convention committee that he was resigning “so as not to become a distraction in this campaign.”

Only 9 days in the job. But the fall was even faster than that. Newsweek broke the story of Goodyear's Myanmar ties at Noon on Saturday. By 5:00 PM, Goodyear was gone. As Newsweek later noted, this set "a new land speed record for shortest time lapsed between the "story breaks" and "ax falls" phases of a political scandal."