Obama Campaign's "Keating Five" 13-Minute Documentary & Some Responses

by Damozel | I never have the reaction to these things I'm supposed to. At first, and even though I've brought up Keating 5 myself on a number of occasions, I ended up feeling bad for John McCain and wishing Obama hadn't gone this route.  On the other hand, McCain's response depressed hell out me.  And---seriously, come on---it's entirely relevant to what is happening right now.  As Hilzoy so excellently puts it, "People who live in seven glass houses shouldn't throw stones."

Ben Smith said:

[T]he story of McCain and Keating is not guilt by association; it's guilt by guilt. McCain's problem isn't that he knew Keating in activities unconnected to his wrongdoing; it's that Keating, in the course of his wrondoing, gave McCain money and tried, with a bit of success, to use him to influence regulators. It's also part of the case Obama's making that McCain has opposed necessarily financial regulations....

....McCain hardly hides the affair. He called it, in his 2002 autobiography, "the worst mistake of my life." He remade himself as a reformer in reaction to the scandal. McCain's case isn't that you should ignore his sin, or that it isn't a sin; it's that he's expiated it.

Avedon Carol: "Oh, yes, it's still a mystery why John McCain didn't go to jail with the others in the Keating Five scandal. It's quite obvious what he learned from that."  Bu-but he reformed!  He was sorry and he reformed!   Then he became a reformer.  Right?  Am I right?

Well, no.  He seems to have had a rethink, judging by today's response. 

I'd always thought McCain's great strength in defending the Keating affair was that he'd acknolwedged making a huge mistake, and spent his career repenting by recasting himself as a reformer.

So when his campaign puts his lawyer on the line with reporters to contest the details of a congressional inquiry that, largely, let McCain off the hook, doesn't that cloud the sin-confession-atonement dynamic a bit?...

[And] if so, what's this giant mistake that transformed McCain into a reformer? (Politico)

John Aravosis noticed this too.

This opens up the entire question of McCain's supposed contrition. If McCain thinks he did nothing wrong, and that it was wrong for the Senate to scold him for his actions during the Keating Five Scandal, then he isn't contrite at all, he isn't sorry at all. He's learned nothing. You can't turn a new leaf when you don't think you did anything wrong. This is one hell of an admission. (AMERICAblog)

Jay McDonough at Newshoggers comments on just how badly the McCain strategy of attacking Obama on character has backfired:

The Keating Five attack, however, directly ties John McCain to the current economic meltdown; a long held disdain for regulation, an elitist disregard for the rules of the game, and a long membership in the "good ole boys" club.

In fact, many agree that McCain's [Palin's] attacks miss the mark while Obama's are all too relevant.  At The Swamp, John Silva says:

[I]n the case of the McCain campaign's attack, running mate Sarah Palin has reached so far into the past of an associate of Democrat Barack Obama that it has no apparent relevance to the candidate himself, while the Obama campaign today plows an episode of influence-peddling in Washington in which Republican John McCain has admitted his own "poor judgment.''...

But in the case of the McCain campaign's attack, running mate Sarah Palin has reached so far into the past of an associate of Democrat Barack Obama that it has no apparent relevance to the candidate himself, while the Obama campaign today plows an episode of influence-peddling in Washington in which Republican John McCain has admitted his own "poor judgment.''

Palin accuses Obama of "palling around with terrorists'' - one, actually, who isn't really a terrorist anymore, but happens to be a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago and an author of educational reform books, William Ayers, who - four decades ago - took part in the radical anti-Vietnam war protests of the Weather Underground which he helped form, a group claiming credit for protest-bombings at the Pentagon and the Capitol.

Obama, who was eight years old at the time of those bombings, has denounced the past activities of the radical-turned-professor, and has served on civic boards in Chicago with him.

The Obama campaign's retaliatory attack today hits much closer to home for McCain....

Yglesias sees this as the end of John McCain's ability to portray himself as reformed as well as a reformer.

As Jake Tapper explained this morning part of the convention surrounding the whole “don’t mention the Keating Five when talking about how great John McCain is” issue is that McCain is unusually good at apologizing for doing the wrong thing...  McCain now seems to be un-apologizing for pressuring regulators at Keating’s behest, instead insisting that he did nothing wrong....

Then Yglesias, because he is Yglesias, says (and because he is Yglesias, it isn't clear whether he is tongue-in-cheek, but "not" is more likely than not):

McCain thinks that advancing his agenda of tax cuts, deregulation, indefinite occupation of Iraq, and starting “other wars” is important enough to be worth risking his reputation over and on some level I can’t help but admire his willingness to go all in.

Jesus.  I can help admiring it.   I do not admire it.   I don't have any trouble at all not admiring it. 

Steve Benen says,  "It's hard to believe, but the McCain campaign has deliberately made this a new story all over again, just when the Obama campaign wants it to be."

Political moderate Justin Gardner agrees. "I think this will be a far more effective attack on McCain, than McCain raising Ayers Rezko and Wright...And ultimately, I think McCain will regret going negative in these last few weeks."

At Open Left, David Sirota---who is happy that Obama is finally raking up this troubling bit of political history--- enjoins progressives to push back against the inevitable media push-back. 

While the attacks on Obama are absurd extrapolations, it is undeniable that McCain was formally rebuked by the Senate Ethics Committee for his involvement in a financial scandal most analagous to today's economic crisis.

While both Obama and McCain bowed down to Wall Street in supporting the recent bailout bill, only one of them - McCain - has displayed a zealous fervor for deregulation, and the Keating Five scandal is about as a good an example of that fervor as there can be....

The media will do whatever it can to pretend McCain wasn't formally rebuked when, in fact, that's part of the historical record. We have to fight through the inevitable media blowback and make sure as many Americans as possible know that record.

DownWithTyranny says

This all happen almost two decades ago and I wonder how many DWT readers recall when McCain was caught red-handed taking bribes from the worst bankrobber and swindler in American history, a close family friend, introduced to McCain by his jailbird, Mafiosa father-in-law. It is difficult to understand McCain's (and the GOP's) role in the current Wall Street meltdown without understanding McCain's role in the S&L and the Keating Five scandals

I was fairly young at the time and certainly not that interested in politics, but I remember it well.  For one thing, it's the main reason my Republican mother had trouble stomaching McCain and has decided that she probably won't bother to vote. 

Hilzoy has been keeping a list of all the dirt on McCain that Obama has refrained from using.  She hopes---and so do I---that Obama will bring up McCain's background only in response to McCain's attempts to throw mud.  She notes:

One obvious example, in McCain's case, is the fact that his father-in-law, whose fortune helped financed his campaigns, and whom he has described as a role model, was a convicted criminal who had ties to organized crime. I do not, myself, regard most of these stories as relevant, though given the present economic crisis, I think the Keating Five story is. But many of them have more substance and more relevance than the wafer-thin story of Obama's acquaintance with Ayers.

If you look around the "Keating Economics" site, you'll find plenty of documentation for the video. It "includes a wealth of information and documents, including personal letters from McCain to White House colleagues and federal regulators asking for them to back off Charles Keating. This letter to then-WH Chief of Staff James Baker in 1985 is particularly striking, if only for the line "I believe it to be unwise, and I think it flys (sic) in the face of our recent efforts to remove the hand of government from the affairs of private enterprise." That sentence alone explains much of the current crisis.."  (DDay)

Emptywheel has some fascinating information about McCain's legal representation that you'll have to read a couple of times to take on board.  That story's complicated and yet...simple.  In what it implies, that is. 

Sarah Palin is eager for McCain to bring up the Reverend Wright stuff.  Fair enough.  Obama can then respond by digging up the similar (or even angrier) statements by the late founder of the Alaska Independence Party to which Todd Palin belonged for seven years? Will they show her being anointed at her own church against witchcraft?  While I agree with Hilzoy that Obama needs to stay on topic, I want them to call out McCain and Palin on their hypocrisy every chance they get.

Oliver Willis remarks:  "We need a new measurement for the McCain campaign: Whoppers per minute, or something."

Joe Klein sees off McCain and Palin here with a sharp journalistic kick.

[W]hat a desperate empty embarrassment the McCain campaign has become.

Memeorandum has more.

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Comments

[Danny]

Talk about the POT calling the kettle black.

Obama has a judgment issue he doesn't want to talk about so you go after McCain with a million words that can be summed up in two word - Poor judgement.

Now that we know both Obama and McCain are capable of poor judgement - who has the most to lose?

Obama is unwilling to even talk about his poor judgement including Revko, Wright, Ayers etc. I wouldn't vote for a guy with Obamas track record because it would be like buying a used car with no lemon law you will most likely end up with a POS and this country doesn't need another POS in the White House.

[Eric Dondero]

Funny how you completely ignore Sarah Palin's ties to the Libertarian Party of Alaska which are much stronger and more recent than her ties to the AIP.

A little bias against Libertarians perhaps?

[Avedon]

Jeez, McCain and Keating robbed the country, and some people want to say that's worse than going to a church where the pastor is angry about racism, or knowing a guy who back in prehistory belonged to a group that did stupid things, or even Rezko?

No. What the Keating Five scandal was about was stealing large amounts of money from the American people and ruining many savings and loan institutions. McCain didn't just know someone who did that, he helped hmi do it - and he's been helping other people do it ever since. He's not merely someone who made an error in the past, he's someone with a consistent record of treasonous participation in the greatest heist in history.

[Benna]

None of your pro O people bring up John Glenn.

Is Obama against what the Keating Five represents or is he just blowing his usual smoke.

[Deb Cupples (Buck Naked Politics)]

Benna,

I don't understand your comment (though I didn't write this blog post).

I've been aware of the Keating-5 since I researched the Savings and Loan Scandal years ago. It's a fact of history.

What McCain did was corrupt as hell -- whether or not a Democrat had done something else that was equally bad.

What is the LOGIC behind excusing one person's conduct because someone else in the world did something worse?

That's like saying "We should free all the rapists from prison, because some other prisoners had committed murder."

[Deb Cupples (Buck Naked Politics)]

Hi Danny,

You know that I'm reluctantly voting for Obama. And I agree with you that both Obama and McCain have shown questionable judgment.

Still, it is unfair to say "Obama is unwilling to even talk about his poor judgment including Revko, Wright, Ayers etc."

Obama DID acknowledge his poor judgment. Re: Rezko, he said that he'd been "bone-headed." RE; Wright: he cut ties. Re: Ayres, he also expressed disapproval for the conduct of 40 years ago (who wouldn't disapprove, right?)

Similarly, McCain has -- in the past -- acknowledged his Keating-5 error (though, now he seems to claim that it was all just a smear).

I'd say that both candidates are in similar positions of having made some bad decisions and acknowledged them.

Note: I'm NOT trying to persuade you to vote for Obama. The Nov. 4 choice is one that each of us has to make for herself.

[Danny]

Deb

LOL

You have been in the kool-aid again. Thats a shame because you once had some integrity to post by. Now you question anyone who doesn't buy the kool-aid Obama has to sell.

McCain and Glenn were exonerated not even playing a part in any criminal acts or otherwise but you said above " I've been aware of the Keating-5 since I researched the Savings and Loan Scandal years ago. It's a fact of history.

What McCain did was corrupt as hell -- whether or not a Democrat had done something else that was equally bad."

If you researched anything at all you would know that McCain sat in on some meetings and was only said to have had poor judgement whatever that means. NOTHING I GATHER! So its funny how Obamamites want to talk about poor judgement but they don't want see that Obama and his gang of thugs are guilty of all sorts of crimes. Take a look at that money trail again you were rolling out when Hillary was still in the race. Hillary is really hurting her cred for this asshole too. Don't do it. Look in the mirror and find yourself again. Obama is bad news and not in a good way.

[Teh Nutroots]

Danny, don't come to our site and insult our posters. Give your opinion of the piece---fine. Withhold the personal attacks.

[Deb Cupples (Buck Naked Politics)]

HI Danny,

It's OK that you think I drank kool-aid, though I disagree. Kool-aid Drinkers are infatuated with Obama and think he can do no wrong.

I've repeatedly stated that I'm NOT an avid Obama supporter, I just think he's a better bet than McCain due to how I think each would exercise veto power.

About Keating 5: YOU ARE RIGHT in the sense that there's not enough proof to convict McCain in court of having tried to influence regulators on Charles Keating's behalf.

But I'm NOT in a court of law.

I can't help but see corruption when I see a politician EVEN TRY to persuade regulators to not take action against a crook who's tied to the politician's family (personally and financially).

McCain reportedly ADMITTED in his book that he'd regretted his poor judgment re: Keating.

That's euphemistic politician-speak for "I did something wrong."

Only now is McCain reversing himself and basically saying that there's nothing to regret, because it was all a fake smear.

Personally, I don't buy it, although you're welcome to.

Admittedly, If I were on a jury trying McCain over this, I would NOT convict unless someone produced taped conversations or written evidence.

[Van Sales]

I visited this blog first time and found it very interesting and informative.. Keep up the good work thanks..