Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on Monday will launch a multimedia campaign to draw attention to the involvement of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the “Keating Five” savings-and-loan scandal of 1989-91, which blemished McCain’s public image and set him on his course as a self-styled reformer. Retaliating for what it calls McCain’s “guilt-by-association” tactics, the Obama campaign is e-mailing millions of supporters a link to a website, KeatingEconomics.com, which will have a 13-minute documentary on the scandal beginning at noon Eastern time on Monday. The overnight e-mails urge recipients to pass the link on to friends.
The Obama campaign is using the economic situation to justify the attacks: “The current economic crisis demands that we understand John McCain’s attitudes about economic oversight and corporate influence in federal regulation. … The Keating scandal is eerily similar to today’s credit crisis, where a lack of regulation and cozy relationships between the financial industry and Congress has allowed banks to make risky loans and profit by bending the rules.” But he opened the door for this tactic long before the current crisis’ culmination, in May of this year:
Senator Barack Obama said today that a scandal from Senator John McCain’s past – the Keating Five – was just as relevant to the presidential campaign as questions about who Mr. Obama has associated with over the years. In a news conference here, Mr. Obama was asked whether his campaign intended to raise the banking scandal from the 1980s, which Mr. McCain has apologized for. Every piece of every candidate’s public record, Mr. Obama said, is “germane to the presidency.” “I was just asked previously about a whole host of issues and associations that are a lot more flimsy than John McCain’s relationship to Keating Five,” Mr. Obama said. “What I said, I can’t quarrel with the American people wanting to know more about that and me having to answer questions about it.”
While, in true Obama fashion, he simultaneously distanced himself from the exact argument he’s making today, which at the time was delivered by superdelegate Rep. Peter DeFazio introducing him at a rally:
Obama today was asked if he believes McCain’s association with Keating Five is fair game. “Congressman DeFazio obviously delivered a speech that wasn’t my speech,” Obama said instantaneously, trying to separate DeFazio’s comments from his own.
He does love to have it both ways. As long as he “can’t quarrel with the American people wanting to know more about that” and him “having to ask questions about it,” Bill Ayers sounds like a dandy topic for the debate Tuesday. The McCain campaign should offer Obama a deal. They’ll stop talking about Bill Ayers as soon as Barack Obama apologizes for associating with him, the Nexis search for Ayers reaches “more than 3000 results,” and he offers 20 years of public and legislative penance for perceived misdeeds. ‘Round about 2028, he’ll be free and clear. Obama will release a mini-documentary of the scandal, here, at noon today. I’m guessing it won’t emphasize the fact that only McCain and John Glenn were found not guilty of violating any Senate rules.
In the mid 1980s Mr. Keating had engineered $1.3 million in campaign contributions to the five lawmakers. In return he expected the senators to lean on federal bank regulators to back off from their investigation into his shaky institution, which was crippled by poor junk-bond investments and real-estate speculation. The central event came in April 1987, when the senators met twice with Federal Home Loan Bank Board examiners, who charge that the senators pressured them to leave Lincoln alone. Sensing impropriety, Senators McCain and Glenn quickly withdrew (as Mr. Bennett recognized when he recommended last September that they be dropped from the probe). Senators Cranston, DeConcini, and Riegle, however, continued to press Mr. Keating’s case. Eventually the government was forced to seize Lincoln anyway, at a bailout cost to taxpayers of $2 billion.
