There have to be other lawyers in Washington besides Robert B. Barnett, but lately it would seem that Barnett is getting all the work.
Barnett, a partner at the powerhouse firm of Williams & Connolly LLP, represented Karen Hughes, the George Bush confidant and strategist, who was hired this week by Mark Penn, the Bill and Hillary Clinton confidant and strategist.
Hughes will be a vice chairman at Burson-Marsteller, the public relations firm headed by Penn.
“Mark and I share a vision that communications people should be strategic advisers,” Hughes told The Wall Street Journal. “And we also share the same lawyer.”
Barnett also negotiated for Matthew E. Brauchli. The former managing editor of the Journal this week was named the new executive editor of The Washington Post.
And he represented Howard Wolfson, the Democratic partisan and Hillary Clinton spokesman. He’s becoming a commentator for Fox News. He’ll join Karl Rove, the former Bush adviser and Barnett client.
Barnett is also serving as a kind of peacemaker between the campaign staffs of Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, and Hillary Clinton.
The hope is that the Obama people will help the Clinton campaign with its accumulated debt. Also in need of resolution are Clinton’s roles at the Democratic convention and in the fall campaign.
Barnett has positive history with both Clinton and Obama, as he represented them in their book deals.
According to a 2004 profile in the Times, Barnett considers his work with authors to be a kind of side job to his work in corporate law for clients that include McDonald’s Corp. and General Electric.
He charges authors his hourly rate - it was then $750 an hour, but would have to be higher now - rather than a percentage of the contract, the usual procedure. In some cases, he might make a tenth of what an agent would.
“I’m a lawyer, not an agent,” Barnett told the Times.
But whether or not he is an agent, Barnett has an extraordinary number of authors under his wing.
In addition to Bill and Hillary Clinton and Obama, the short list of Barnett’s authors includes Bob Woodward, Lynne Cheney, James Patterson, Alan Greenspan, Tim Russert, Katharine Graham, James Carville and Mary Matalin.
Barnett, who is married to CBS News senior correspondent Rita Braver, also represents enough television news reporters to start his own network. Lesley Stahl, Sam Donaldson, Gwen Ifill, and Andrea Mitchell, among others, have Barnett for an attorney.
A graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, Barnett clerked first for John Minor Wisdom of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and then for Associate Supreme Court Justice Byron White.
He then served as a legislative assistant for Sen. Walter F. Mondale before joining Williams & Connolly in 1975.
A Democrat, Barnett has helped several Democratic presidential and vice presidential candidates prepare for debates by playing the part of their opponent.
He’s channeled George H.W. Bush several times in practice sessions for vice-presidential debates and then for the 1992 presidential debates with Bill Clinton.
During the past two presidential campaigns, he took on the role of Dick Cheney, sparring with Joe Lieberman in 2000 and John Edwards in 2004.
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