A defense of Paul Manafort

On May 2, 2016, I sent an email to my old boss, Paul J. Manafort, to tell him that my book would be released at the end of the month.

“You make a guest appearance in the first chapter,” I told Paul. “The year is 1989, and it is set in Mogadishu, Somalia.”

Paul wrote back to me, “I find appearing in your fiction book quite appropriate, as I am currently living in a fantasy world! GOOD LUCK!”

{mosads}“Hey, Paul,” I replied immediately, “It’s not a fiction novel, it’s my memoir!”

I didn’t hear back after that. But I didn’t expect to. Paul was really busy, one month into his job as chairman of the Trump Campaign.

And so it began. My memoir, Choosing the Hero: My Improbable Journey and the Rise of Africa’s First Woman President, which celebrates the rise of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the President of Liberia, became “must-have” content for political reporters covering Trump and his new campaign chairman.

Chapter One, “He’s Our Bad Guy,” which recalls my descent into the hell of Mogadishu as the rebels were closing in on the city, a mission that my then boss, Paul Manafort sent me on, was excerpted in in: The Guardian, Fortune Magazine, Le Monde, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal, CQ/Roll Call, The Hill on National Public Radio, and translated into Chinese, French, Spanish, German, and Russian.

In the book I describe Paul like this: “He is one of those rare individuals who can cut through the noise, unerringly get to the heart of a problem, and hit on a solution. Inside the firm, we joke that working at Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly is like playing one big game of Stratego: building armies and scheming to take over the world. That is exactly what it feels like working with Manafort. In fact, at times, that is exactly what was going on.”

Mutual friends tell me that I nailed Paul’s character in the chapter. But that was easy, having worked for him for nearly a decade, 1985 to 1995, a time of great global transition, when I was willing to go anywhere.

Paul and I parted ways twenty years ago. I eventually opened my own firm, KRL International LLC. Paul continued to play that game of Stratego.

I wasn’t surprised by the media scrutiny that settled on Paul’s work in Ukraine in support of former president Viktor Yanukovych. The storyline was just too good: “the evil genius” behind the “campaign without a soul.” But two things did surprise me.

First. The report that Manafort had to go because the investigation into his work in Ukraine became the story, and Paul was a “distraction” to his client-candidate, Donald Trump, that, I get. But a one-dimensional explanation didn’t satisfy. Paul was blamed, in article after article, citing “unnamed campaign officials,” for everything from Trump’s precipitous drop in the polls, his off-the-cuff remarks, to Trump’s gross miscalculations, like publicly attacking the “Gold Star” family.

But Paul Manafort is smarter than that. Trump brought him on because he is a master at what he does, a campaign tactician, a delegate-counter, a manager. If he failed, as everyone now suggests (Sarah Palin celebrated Paul’s exit with a caustic tweet), it likely had more to do with the fact that his advice was being ignored and that he couldn’t control his off-script candidate.

The second thing that surprised me, or more accurately, disappointed, was that with a single exception, none of the journalists who excerpted Choosing the Hero, even those with deep background in international affairs and Africa, had the curiosity to read beyond the first chapter, beyond the anecdotes about Paul.

No one seemed interested in a larger-than-life story about a woman, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who dedicated her life to bring peace and democracy to her country, who succeeded against all odds, made history, became the first democratically-elected woman to lead an African nation, and went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

We need people to guide us, the heroes that we choose @BookTV #EllenJohnsonSirleaf https://t.co/R1ceG36Kx7 pic.twitter.com/pdoEJhW2wy

— K. Riva Levinson (@RivaLevinson) July 17, 2016

My guess is that a message about the power of faith and perseverance, about dedicating one’s life to something bigger than self, just isn’t going to sell in this American election cycle.

So we won’t have Paul Manafort to kick around anymore. The media will find someone else to set their sights on. And Donald Trump, with Paul gone, will now be left with no one to blame but himself.

K. Riva Levinson is President and CEO of KRL International LLC a DC-based consultancy that works in the world emerging markets. She is the author of Choosing the Hero: My Improbable Journey and the Rise of Africa’s First Woman President (Kiwai Media, 2016).

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