Yawn: Obama blowing the dust off the Keating Five scandal
Probably an unwise move. You can’t take jabs at your opponent about something that happened in the 80s, then whine about having to answer for your own associations during this century. And Obama will. Believe it.
Everyone wondered whether, and how, John McCain’s charter membership in the “Keating Five” — a group of congressmen implicated in trying to foil government inquiries into Savings & Loan baron Charles Keating’s corner of the 1980s S&L scandals — would find its way into the 2008 campaign.
Wall Street answered that question for us.
McCain’s lawyer just said that the Keating Five investigation was “political” as it concerned John McCain. He shouldn’t even have been admonished by the Senate, his lawyer says.
Then McCain’s lawyer dropped the real bomb.
The Keating Five Investigation was “a political smear job on John [McCain].” WTF? He called Howell Heflin, who led the hearings, a “stooge” of the Democratic machine out to get poor, innocent John McCain.
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.
A lawyer pointing out correctly that the Senate did something wrong, doesn’t mean the client has no regrets. I’m pretty sure McCain has already paid the piper on this one, and the 13-minute Youtube-fodder documentry is preaching to the converted. Regular folks won’t care, but they will take note the gloves are off.
I’m glad the gloves are off. Let the games begin. Start here.
