For those of us who can remember the last banking scandal, it's a bit amusing that McCain is at the center of much of it again. That deregulation debacle only cost the taxpayers about $125 billion. One of the things to come out of it though was the Keating 5 scandal. I should be clear that McCain was never convicted of any wrongdoing. Of course the key word is "convicted." However, "McCain was criticized by the {Senate}Committee for exercising "poor judgment" when he met with the federal regulators on Keating's behalf." You see, McCain attended private and secret meetings with the very people who were supposed to be regulating his friend Keating's industry, the Savings and Loan business. This was the same friend, who through his own and other's donations, had given McCain over $100,000 for his campaigns. He also had taken McCain on his private plane to the Bahamas. The trips, or rather McCain finally paying for them, also caused a controversy because although McCain has always maintained he intended to pay Keating back for them, it conveniently took him several years to do so and only after the scandal was starting to occur.
In the end, McCain had this to say:
"I was judged eventually, after three years, of using, quote, poor judgment, and I agree with that assessment."
Do you all get the feeling too that this wasn't the first and it probably won't be the last time that McCain used poor judgment.
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Keating Five Member is Obama Surrogate
Amanda Carpenter
Monday, October 06, 2008
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?
Obama’s presidential campaign released a scathing documentary on Monday detailing McCain’s ties to the Savings and Loan crisis on the 1980’s. Five U.S. senators were named in the scandal: Sen. Alan Cranston (D.-Calif.), Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D.-Ariz.), Sen. John Glenn (D.-Ohio), Sen. John McCain (R.-Ariz.) and Sen. Donald Reigle (D-Minn.).
"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," reads a trailer for the video on a website created by the Obama campaign to attack McCain, www.keatingeconomics.com. "And in both cases, John McCain's judgment and values have placed him on the wrong side of history.
But Obama doesn’t seem to have any quarrel with Glenn. The former Democratic Ohio senator introduced Bruce Springsteen at a benefit concert for Obama in Ohio on Sunday, October 5. He's also done other surrogate work for Obama as well. According to Obama's presidential website Glenn held a conference calls with reporters for Obama in August.
A day after Glenn urged people to register to vote for Obama in Ohio, Obama’s campaign began a multimedia campaign to remind the public McCain was one of the “Keating Five” although he was eventually cleared of all charges.
Like McCain, Glenn was also found not guilty of violating any Senate rules.
Attorney John Dowd, who represented McCain during the Senate Ethics investigation, said Senate Democrats conducted a "classic political smear job" on McCain in the Keating Five scandal.
"When it was discovered Keating was pushing too hard, he [McCain] threw Keating out of his office and ended all relations with him," Dowd said.
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Obama isn't supporting Glenn for president. This is a matter of judgement. McCain has shown poor judgement for years. He has compromised values before and he is still compromising them.
To bring up the Keating 5 is not a smear job. It's not guilt by association. It's a reminder of the types of decisions that McCain is likely to make based on the decisions he has been making all along.
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