Obama: "I'll see your association, and raise you some culpability"

by Jay McDonough

As the McCain campaign continues to question Barack Obama's "judgment" over his association with Bill Ayers (it's apparently all they have left at this point),  the question remains: does the Obama campaign (not so) secretly hope John McCain raises the issue in the next debate?

From Matt Yglesias:

I think all indications are that they really do think they have a dynamite response by the name of Charles Keating. Whatever you think of Obama’s association with Ayers, McCain was clearly much closer to Keating than Obama ever was to Ayers. And, again, though the Keating 5 scandal is “ancient history” in news cycle terms, it happened much more recently than any Weather Underground bombings. And though the S&L crisis of the 1980s is of only tangential relevance to the present-day banking crisis, it’s still much more relevant than anything Ayers did. And last, McCain was accused of actual Keating-related wrongdoing, whereas nobody has tried to allege that Obama was actually involved in any of Ayers’ bad acts.

This little tidbit from yesterday's news might give Senator McCain pause:

The Washington Times reports that in 1986, John McCain wrote a note on House stationery to Charles Keating, chairman of a failed savings and loan association who went to prison in the late 1980s. In the letter, McCain apologized for listing Keating as part of his Senate campaign finance committee. Keating wrote in response: “You can call me anything, write anything or do anything. I’m yours till death do us part“:

For some background, when Charles Keating's Lincoln Savings finally declared bankruptcy, some 21,000 investors, most elderly, lost their entire life savings.   When Keating was subpoenaed to appear before the House Banking Committee in 1989, he refused to testify and invoked his fifth amendment rights.

Keating, like Bill Ayers, is unrepentent (despite being convicted and serving time in federal prison).  Keating claims he did no wrong, that federal regulators were responsiblie for the savings and loan scandal.

Given the current economic crisis; given the McCain campaigns inability to gain any traction because of the economy's collapse; given the similiarities between the savings and loans failures and today's economic issues; given, not just a casual relationship, but a binding "til death do us part" relationship between Keating and McCain; and given McCain's admitted (perhaps inadvertant) involvement in abetting Charles Keating's criminal activities (no one, despite much investigation, has ever charged Obama with anything more than a casual working relationship with Ayers), one can understand why John McCain would be reluctant to bring up Bill Ayers at the next debate.