The Keating Connection

J. Jennings Moss reports: Remember Charles Keating? Barack Obama's presidential campaign hopes so. But just in case you don't, the campaign today released a 13-minute online documentary about the poster child for the savings and loan crisis of nearly 20 years ago, and of John McCain's involvement in it.

The video, "Keating Economics: John McCain and the Making of a Financial Crisis", was posted on a special minisite, KeatingEconomics.com, shortly after noon EDT.

"The point of the film and the web site is that John McCain still hasn't learned his lesson," Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said in email to supporters. "And this time, McCain's bankrupt economic philosophy has put our economy at the brink of collapse and put millions of Americans at risk of losing their homes."

The video gives a primer on the failure of Lincoln Savings and Loan, the tactics of its chairman, Charles Keating, and the role played by five U.S. senators: Alan Cranston, Dennis DeConcini, John Glenn, Donald Reigle, and John McCain. All but McCain were Democrats. The Senate Ethics Committee determined that McCain's role was minimal and cleared the charges against him.

"The McCain campaign has tried to avoid talking about the scandal, but with so many parallels to the current crisis, McCain's Keating history is relevant and voters deserve to know the facts -- and see for themselves the pattern of poor judgment by John McCain," Plouffe wrote.

It's surprising that it's taken the Obama campaign this long to slam McCain over his ties to Keating. Last month, Bob Rice laid out in Portfolio.com how Keating might be used against McCain, but he also questioned whether Obama would go after him on the topic.

"Maybe the Democrats ... remind the public of McCain's role in the last debacle, and hang him with three labels at once: hypocritical old insider. But with a Hypermodernist on the other side of the board, I wouldn't bet on it," Rice wrote.

A search on John McCain's site brings up six references to a Keating, but it's not that Keating. It's former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating, a national co-chairman of the McCain campaign.

J. Jennings Moss

Get a daily fix of how politicians, business leaders, and others in the news are faring with the Portfolio.com Capital Index.