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Editorial: Campaign sidetrip
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Slipping in the polls, Republican John McCain has decided, as his exuberant running mate has repeatedly urged, to "take the gloves off," and Democrat Barack Obama, perhaps sensitive to charges that he is too often slow to counterpunch, has decided to reply in kind.
The result has been entertaining in a professional wrestling sort of way but short on voter enlightenment. To take two examples:
The McCain campaign has been aggressively trying to tar Sen. Obama with guilt by association with Bill Ayers, a founder of the radical Weather Underground who has admitted to several bombings in the early '70s.
Mr. Ayers, who has since become a respected educator, is a neighbor of Sen. Obama's and they briefly served on a charitable board and an education project together. But extensive investigations by reputable news organizations have found no close or continuing contact between the two. Even so, Gov. Palin repeatedly brings up Obama's ties to a "domestic terrorist," which Mr. Ayers undeniably was. That was 36 years ago. And, as Sen. Obama has pointed out, he was 8 years old when the Weather Underground was formed.
The Obama campaign, meanwhile, has revived Sen. McCain's association with the Keating Five, a group of senators that intervened to protect a savings and loan belonging to influential Arizona developer Charles Keating from federal regulators. The S&L failed at a cost to the taxpayers of more than $2 billion. A Senate ethics committee investigation found Sen. McCain had used "poor judgment," for which he has been apologizing ever since.
The S&L failed in 1989; the ethics hearing was in 1990. You would think there would be a statute of limitations on this kind of stuff but the Obama Web site has posted a 13-minute reprise, complete with ominous music, called "Keating Economics — John McCain and the Making of A Financial Crisis." The implication is that he's responsible for the current one as well.
With the economy going off a cliff, you would think the two campaigns could find something more productive to talk about than relatively ancient scandals.
Posted by laurarmc on October 8, 2008 at 6:48 a.m. (Suggest removal)
The Keating story is relevant to our economic situation today, because it is illustrative of the kinds of places McCain has always sought financial guidance (Keating, though criminal, argued for deregulation the same way Phil Gramm does), and the judgments he made at the time when a friend asked for help.
Yes, he later apologized, but that doesn't change the fact that McCain thought it acceptable to enter a room with 5 senators, 1 regulator, and no notes, and pressure the regulator to leave Keating alone.
Nor does his apology change the fact that in the two years following, while Keatings schemes stripped 20,000 seniors of their life savings, McCain was silent, and allowed the criminal conduct to go forward.
The Keating scandal, in other words, speaks directly to Senator McCains personal decisions in the public sphere.
The Ayers story is, instead, a non-story. Guilt by association with a man who was never convicted of anything.
Posted by mikeb6804 on October 8, 2008 at 8:54 a.m. (Suggest removal)
"Mr. Ayers, who has since become a respected educator." -- respected by whom, VC Star? By you? Certainly not by me. He should be in prison.
laura -- do you remember any of the other Keating 5? One of them was retired Senator John Glenn, another true American hero. He is now actively campaigning for Obama.
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