After watching Governor Palin and a number of McCain surrogates launch a new strategy over the last few days of trying to accentuate Obama’s associations with William Ayers, Jeremiah Wright and Tony Rezko, I figured that a Keating Five counter-punch was coming soon.
And the Politico reports: Exclusive: Obama to hit McCain on Keating Five
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.
On the one hand, this is something of a blast from the past. On the other, it is a blast from the last time we had a major crisis in the finance sector and the last time that the federal government had to get involved in fixing it. It isn’t exactly the kind of thing that McCain should want to be in the middle of the national conversation at the moment.
McCain will try to counter the story by casting it as his Road to Damascus moment in terms of lobbyist and his rebirth as The Maverick. Still, in terms of the political narrative, this is not the kind of thing that McCain needs to be filtering into the story at this point in time.
It seems exceedingly unlikely that Ayers, Wright and Rezko are going to start resonating now when they haven’t to this point (it should be noted: none of these are new stories and have been in the mix for roughly a year). Given that fact, the “guilt-by-association” card was a dangerous one for the McCain camp to play given that they had to know that the Keating Five was the obvious counter-play.
I don’t think, by the way, that the Keating Five story is some super counter-attack that will lay waste to McCain’s campaign. However, it is more than enough to cause some voters to pause and wonder what McCain was up to during the Savings and Loan crash and to then draw parallels to the current financial bailout. Given that early voting has begun in a number of states, this isn’t good timing for McCain.
In terms of AyersWrightRezko: all that tactic will do is give hardcore McCain supporters and talk radio hosts another reason to dislike Obama. That simply isn’t going to be enough to win this election, not by a longshot.
To summarize: AyerWrightRezko isn’t new and isn’t likely to cause many to change their minds at this point. However, Keating hasn’t been a major focus to date and introducing it is a wildcard in the wake of the financial crisis. McCain’s campaign has made what may turn out to be a serious tactical error by taking this path.
James Joyner has a good write-up on this general story as well.
Who ARE these people that approve of Bush (other than Hugh Dimwitt & my brother-in law)?
Comment by RandyB — Tuesday, October 7, 2026 @ 11:30 am