Daniel Glover called Hynes for a response to my earlier questioning of his credibility.

Reached by telephone, Hynes said such criticism is irrelevant because he is “not even doing any policy work for AARP.” He reiterated his previous description of the consulting work: “They have a blog, they want to make it a better blog, and I’m helping them do it.”

Um. That’s sorta’ beside the point. Public relations people don’t generally do policy. They help with message, image, and promotion. In Hynes’ case, he’s helping the AARP get its message out via the organization’s blog, a blog that has the phrase “social security” in its URL.

Just months ago, Hynes was Cato’s PR man on Social Security choice. The two organizations are on polar opposite ends of the issue. Which means that within the course of a year, Hynes has been paid to advance the cause of private accounts, and he’s been paid to advance the cause of opposition to private accounts.

That in itself is sorta’ sleazy. But the latter ought to be of particular concern to the conservatives Hynes claims to speak for on his blog, and in his forthcoming book. And of course, there’s the criticism he levied against left-wing blogs who did the same thing he did with McCain — only they disclosed their paid relationships with political campaigns up front. Hynes waited until he was caught.

Oh, and here’s a bit more disclosure chicanery from Hynes.

Sorry. Hynes may be a terrific PR man. But he isn’t principled. And I think he’s lost the right to be taken seriously as anything more than a paid shill.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 29th, 2006 at 11:11 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.