Sooner Be Blue

The beauty of this is that it not only hits McCain back for all his smears, but it also forces his campaign to go on the defensive...they'll have to talk about McCain's economic policy and attitudes towards regulation.

From politico.com: "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.

Pushing back against 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.[..]"

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14302.html

http://www.keatingeconomics.com/

We all remember The Keating Five story -- about a crooked bank, Lincoln Savings, trying to keep regulators off its back while it was losing its investors' money. Charles Keating, who ran the bank, had contributed a lot of money to McCain (and the other four Senators)...he had flown McCain and his family to vacations in the Bahamas, vacations McCain paid for only AFTER they were made public...he had invested with Cindy McCain and her father as partners.

Regulators discovered that, by the end of 1986, Lincoln Savings had exceeded the investment regulation by $600 million, and had unreported losses of more than $130 million. Keating was worried that his bank might be seized. So McCain and other Senators met with regulators to urge them to back off. The regulators refused...the bank failed.

Seems to me that people with good judgment don't try to persuade regulators to back off bankers who are in business with their wives... people with good judgment don't support putting foxes in charge of guarding henhouses.

Imagine what McCain's judgment could do for us in the next few years, if we give him the chance.

You know, there is a long list of stories that the Obama campaign has not used against McCain. One is the fact that McCain's father-in-law, whose fortune helped finance his political career, someone he described as a role model, was a convicted criminal who had ties to organized crime.

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=0fd7470d-a41f-4d9e-9328-fd079b476a0a&p=3

To me, this father-in-law-was-a-criminal story is not relevant. But, when you think of today's economic crisis, the Keating Five story has more red meat than the weak story of Obama's acquaintance with Ayers.

See how much politics is like war. Obama's plan is to drown the Ayers-Rezko-Wright rollout in a barrage of counter-attacks...and hopefully attention will return to the economy once the stories have run the news cycle.

Also, if Obama is going to directly challenge McCain's credibility and honor today, hopefully McCain will turn up at the debate tomorrow with a beet red face, stewing and snarling. After all, his response to any journalist challenging his veracity has been snappy red faced anger. Hopefully, his famous temper will be on national teevee for all to see.

In a perfect world, I would prefer that the Obama campaign stick to the high road...but taking that high road always leads us Democrats down into a political cul-de-sac.

No, if Obama wants to win this election, he has to show voters that he has both the will and smarts to fight for it...just like he would for our country. There's nothing wrong with using the Keating story purely as defense.

With McCain being a loose cannon and Palin a landmine, for the sake of our country, he can't afford not to...