Keating Five Documentary
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Today at noon the Obama campaign and its agents of change will released a documentary detailing John McCain’s involvement in the Keating Five scandal. For a good summary of Keating Five, check out Arizona Central’s report from March, 2007. Kathy Gill at About.com gives a summary of what she took away from the article:
- McCain on the scandal: “I was judged eventually, after three years, of using, quote, poor judgment, and I agree with that assessment.”
- McCain was a freshman Senator who had been in office for three months when he was pressured by Arizona senior senator Dennis DeConcini (D) to get involved in the meetings.
- The independent counsel was Robert Bennett (better known today for defending President Clinton in the Paula Jones case). Bennett recommended that both McCain and John Glenn be dropped from the Senate Ethics Committee investigation. It was, however, a Democratic Senate; the committee said no. McCain says it “the first time in history [that] the Ethics Committee overruled the recommendation of the independent counsel.”
The question is, will the public see it the same way?
Obama will spin that this is about the economy and issues, not a personal attack as he claims McCain is making when tying Obama with Ayers and Rezko - one a man with ties to domestic terror and failed schools in Chicago and the other with ties to failed housing deals. But since we have no issues with terrorism, education or a housing crisis any Ayers or Rezko talk is just trying to change the subject.
Also of note: three out of five Keating Fivers support Barack Obama:
McCain spokesman Brian Rogers notes that three of McCain’s fellow members of the Keating Five have endorsed Obama: Former senators Dennis DeConcini. John Glenn, and Donald W. Riegle. All three are Democrats — McCain was the only Republican in the group — and DeConcini and Riegle were among the more deeply implicated officials.
UPDATE: Amada Carpenter at Townhall.com asks a good question:
If Barack Obama is so outraged at John McCain’s involvement in the Keating Five scandal, why is John Glenn, another Keating Five member, doing surrogate work for Obama?
UPDATE 2: NYT in 1995:
Even so, this is not the first case of partisanship in the Senate committee. During the Keating Five scandal, committee Democrats resisted dropping the case against John McCain, the Arizona Republican, because that would have left only Democrats accused of improper dealings with Charles Keating, the savings and loan executive.
[...] (H/T Bearing Drift) [...]
I agree that this is a misstep for the Obama campaign. Someone got overly excited about our current financial dilemma and thought focusing on the Keating Five would be a good way to connect McCain to the crises. Poor judgement there. I’m not sure how much circulation the documentary will get. Everyone seems pretty saturated right now with information, videos, e-mails, phone calls, mainstream media, etc.
Moreover, the Keating Five connection didn’t seem to stick or really do much damage before, why bring it up again? I kinda of already answered this question above, but someone should have asked it before spending the resources to put together the documentary.
I’m going to place this with Obama’s FISA waltz as being something I’m not happy with.
Why bring up Keating? Why bring up Ayer?
According to Palin, due to the fact that Obama attended some meetings with Ayer years ago he’s a terrorist.
Gee, one of my best friends in highschool ended up spending 20 years in prison for kidnapping and bank robbery. He’s out now and I a couple years ago I spend Thanksgiving with him, he still drops by my parents house to see how thier doing. Does that make me a felon too?
You can’t bitch about Obama and then ignore McCain’s tactics.
Frenchy, your comment would make sense if you included some facts, like if your friend assembled the board for the Chicago Annenberg Challenge who hired you and together you raised 60 million dollars over 5 years to intervene in the Chicago school system.
But you can use your “Thanksgiving” story you like. Let me know the next time you find 60 million dollars in the turkey.
Frenchy - Has your friend shown remorse for his actions? Or has he bragged that not only did he do it but that his only regret was that he didn’t get to do more?
My other problem is how quickly Obama throws someone under the bus if they’re a liability. Wright, Ayers, these are men who have been big parts of his life. But he pushes them away when they’re hot when he could just as easily make an argument like yours - We all have friends who have done things in the past that we don’t agree with. But there’s a lot to be said for forgiveness and kindness and hating the sin but loving the sinner.
But if Obama truly thinks that associating with these people is a bad thing, well, why did he do it for so long?
The point is both these guys are professional politicians. Which means they both deal with scum on a daily basis, and I’m pretty sure it’s rubbed off on both of them.
If you can find any electable candidate who doesn’t have bodies buried it truely would be a miracle.
We are passed the point were digging up dirt is going to do America any good, because all these SoBs are covered in it. The question everyone should be asking is… Who will bring this country together and force them to make the hard choices required to dig ourselves out of all of the problems we face.
I see possiblities with both candidates. I think McCain 1.0 may have been that guy. But this current incarnation, McCain 2.0, disturbs me. I really like McCain the Maverick, but the guy who’s listening to and acting on the advise of these political handlers isn’t garnering my trust.
And you’re right, I’m not a guy who’s doing extensive research on either of these guys, just like the majority of the voters I’m going to go on my gut.
Does history record any case in which the majority was right?
-Robert A. Heinlein