Obama Hits McCain With Keating Five Scandal
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, Economy, Ethics, History, McCain
And now we find out that if McCain is going to question Obama’s past connections, the Obama camp will respond in kind.
But one of the key difference here is McCain’s past connections are tied to our last massive economic crisis. So while Ayers, Rezko and Rev. Wright may not necessarily make voters more comfortable with Obama, my guess is that many of them have no idea that McCain was involved in the S&L crisis, so his association with Keating will be new and surprising.
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on Monday is launching 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.Pushing back against what it calls McCain’s “guilt-by-association” tactics, the Obama campaign overnight began 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 e-mails urge recipients to pass the link on to friends. [...]
Obama-Biden communications director Dan Pfeiffer said: “While John McCain may want to turn the page on his erratic response to the current economic crisis, we think voters will find his involvement in a similar crisis to be particularly interesting. His involvement with Keating is a window into McCain’s economic past, present, and future.”
No doubt this is a disappointing turn of events, and the attacks from both sides will turn off independent voters. But the reality here is that McCain is trying to dominate a few news cycles before the debate, and Obama’s response has to be something other than an explanation of his associations.
Enter the Keating Five scandal, which is as strategically perfect a response as you can get because it speaks directly to McCain’s past judgement on the economy and his deregulatory philosophies.
Of note, McCain was cleared of any wrong doing in the scandal, but was publicly chided for his “poor judgement”.
This entry was posted on Monday, October 6th, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, Barack, Economy, Ethics, History, McCain. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
October 6th, 2008 at 8:42 am
My whole family had money in San Antonio Savings. If not for FDIC, good ol’ “Bo” would’ve cleaned us out!
McCain needs to STFU about Ayers and all that crap. I don’t give a tinker’s damn about some washed-up hippie from the ’60s. Ayers didn’t go after my money.
Agnostick
agnostick@excite.com
October 6th, 2008 at 9:25 am
My Grandparents lost their life savings in that scandal and they never recovered. I know McCain as the low down dirty theif he is and it is about time the rest of the Country know the real MCNasty.
October 6th, 2008 at 9:45 am
Hmm..turns out Obama and Co. registered their McCain bashing web space back in September. I guess there are “responses” and then there are “responses.”
Plus it turns out the folks who were actually implicated in the Keating mess (McCain was cleared) support……you guessed it Barack Obama.
Stupid facts!
October 6th, 2008 at 10:48 am
Rich, it seems to me that it’s only natural that campaign strategists are prepared with domain names, reports, etc., all ahead of when they may be needed in a campaign. At least I would hope so, if the campaign managers are worth what they’re paid.
October 6th, 2008 at 10:50 am
It’s about time that the Keating Five was brought up! I’m surprised it wasn’t talked about sooner, and that many people don’t know about it.
October 6th, 2008 at 11:44 am
I get tired of hearing that Barack Obama will damage his brand by reacting to negative attacks. What is he suppose to do if he wants to change the way we do politics in America? Let them do what they do to Democrats every election because they want to run a clean campaign. It was John McCain who vowed to run an honorable campaign earlier this year. Obama attempted to keep it clean and look where he ended up in the polls. This is a dirty low-down system and you have to fight fire with fire, to put out the fire. McCain has never been clean and if they dig deeper they will find more. The republicans under direction of Lee Atwater and all of his followers including Karl Rove, have played the Mccarthyism for to long and the American people are finally catching on, after being robbed again like during the Keating Five.
October 6th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
[...] As mentioned before, I think this will be a far more effective attack on McCain, than McCain raising Ayers Rezko and Wright. [...]