Throwin' Bombs: McCain's "Terrorist" Claim Leads to Exposure of Keating Five Scandal

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDofbll86dY Below is my commentary on the politics behind this hastily crafted, butdevastating videoreleased by the Obama campaign today about John McCain, the Keating Five Scandal, and the broader issue of the deregulation of America's banking industry. (Click hereto see the website the Obama campaign set up to present the video.)

There are certain American icons, John Wayne for instance, that we prefer to remember for the character they played — rather than the person they might have been behind closed doors.  I feel the same way about John McCain.

In this election, no one wanted to see a contest between Senator Obama and the real John McCain.  America would have preferred a contest between Senator Obama and the character John McCain plays on TV: the "maverick," the "reformer," the 20th century war icon.  Personally, I feel confident Obama could have defeated either one.

This may be why you have not heard anything from the Obama campaign about John McCain and the Keating Five Scandaluntil today. It was the weapon they preferred not to use. There were strategists inside the Obama camp who wanted to drop this bomb on McCain from the start (it is now a much BIGGER bomb in light of the current Mortgage Banking Crisis that so closely mirrors the Savings and Loan Scandal that frames The Keating Five). But by sending Sarah Palin out to call Barack Obama a terrorist in her latest memorized stump speech, John McCain has given Obama strategists the excuse to release this 13 minute video that demolishes the character McCain plays on TV, simply by exposing its genesis.

When John McCain was implicated in the Keating Five Scandal, he had been caught red-handed, using his position as a member of Congress to enrich himself, his wife, and his friends. He was so humiliated that he spent the next 20 years trying to atone for it, making it a personal crusade to accuse others of the same or similar improprieties, anointing himself the "maverick" of the U.S. Senate by ruffling feathers in his own party (in general Republicans are against ethics reform).

In his 20-years of playing a maverick on TV, John McCain has in many ways become the icon he aspires to be. Certainly in the eyes of millions of Americans, he is that man. In this way, McCain reminds me of the infamous televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, the man who's sexual appetite was so shameful and tortuous, he spent his lifetime lecturing others about it. Swaggart exposed two other televangelists for sexual improprieties, ruining their careers, only to himself be caught in an airport hotel with a prostitute.  Swaggart's tearful "I have sinned against you" performance earned him forgiveness from his followers and saved his own career. Then he was caught with another prostitute three years later and that was that.

I have no quarrel with Swaggart's penchant for prostitutes, but I do have a concern about John McCain's role in the two largest banking meltdowns in American history, each of which cost American taxpayers billions and billions of dollars.  So, perhaps it was appropriate, in light of the Mortgage Banking Crisis, to draw obvious comparisons to McCain and the Savings and Loan Scandal from 20 years ago.

The sad part is, it wasn't necessary. If McCain had stuck to the issues just a little bit more, instead of building his campaign around calling Obama a traitor and a terrorist, the media would have been more than happy to give McCain a free pass on a past sin that he has done much to atone for. But now that the Obama campaign is talking about The Keating Five, the media is forced to talk about it.

I had hoped the average American would remember John McCain as a "maverick" who lost his bid to become President in 2000, and then tried again in 2008, the year Obama made history.

Now, he may instead be remembered as the Jimmy Swaggart of Senate corruption and billion dollar banking scandals.