Negative Campaigning and the Keating 5

Campbell Brown of CNN recently pleaded with both candidates to "Please, please, don't let this devolve into a campaign that you are sickened by, that we are sickened by, and that you are embarrassed to be part of." This came in response to what was perceived as increasing negativity on the part of both Obama and McCain. While Palin's renewed insinuations that Obama is "palling around with terrorists" amounts to guilt by association of the worst type (tripe), I hardly find anything abhorrent about Obama highlighting McCain's role in the Keating 5 Savings and Loan Scandal. Whereas Obama was all of eight years old when William Ayers and the Weather Underground carried out their non-lethal bombing campaign, McCain played an active role in the savings and loan debacle of the late 80's and early 90's.

The swindle and resulting scandal was the largest violation of the direct-investment rule (limiting the extent to which a lending bank could own real-estate) in history, allowing for massive accounting fraud, which ultimately cost taxpayers about $125 billion. The Keating 5, of which McCain was one, were the congressmen tasked by Charles Keating, then head of Lincoln Savings and Loan, with impeding the Federal Home Loan Bank Board's investigation into Lincoln's business practices. McCain, who had become good friends with Charles Keating, having been treated to nine separate family vacations in the Bahamas at Keating's expense, received $112,000 in campaign contributions, as well as political advice (the advice--deregulate the savings and loan industry). Although McCain was 'cleared of impropriety' by the Senate Ethics Committee (they merely criticized him for his "poor judgement"), the incident remains a stain on McCain's record and a testament to his 'poor judgement' in all matters economic (especially considering that his chief economic advisor was Phil Gramm, whose Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act led directly to the sub-prime mortgage crisis we now face--Gramm only stepped down from his position after making the now infamous remarks: "You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession," and "We have sort of become a nation of whiners....").

Additional questions remain, however, as to the thoroughness of the investigation into McCain's role: "To [fellow Keating 5 member] DeConcini, McCain was let off the hook too easily, due to the fact that McCain was a member of the U.S. House at the time of the meetings and the Senate concluded it didn't have jurisdiction to look into his unreported trips with Keating."

There is nothing positive or negative about history; these are merely facts of which people need to be aware since they go directly to the soundness of McCain's judgement.

Furthermore, it is ludicrous for Palin to go after Obama's (alleged) radical connections when her own husband belonged to a radical Alaskan party which advocated secession.