Text size:

Targeting McCain's "Keating 5" history

Dan Janison | dan.janison@newsday.com

August 28, 2008

DENVER

In the same New York delegation meeting stood two loyal Democrats with starkly different opinions on what may be a big tactical question: whether the Barack Obama campaign should start openly slashing away at Sen. John McCain's role long ago in the collapse of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association.

The handful of senators known as the "Keating 5" had varying roles in helping the effort of Charles H. Keating Jr. try to get federal regulators off his bank as his S&L neared collapse.

Suffolk Democratic chairman Richard Schaffer says this: "The mortgage foreclosure mess is the S&L scandal of the 2000 decade. We should drag it out front and center. It's almost an instant replay of what the Republicans did in the '80s."

Of course, there are shades of gray, one of which is that Democrats were among the other four in the Keating quintet. But in this season, as attack ads intensify, the facts will be tweaked.

One corporate consultant, a one-time Democrat operative who was in the same room as a guest, talked this down as a strategy. His thinking was that so many voters have become sold on the idea of McCain as a "maverick," it wouldn't resonate.

"They'd buy the idea that he's old, they'd buy the idea that he's with Bush. But with that, they'd just say, 'Huh'? I'm sure it'll get brought up, though," said the guest, who declined to be quoted by name.

If he's right, maybe "Keating 5" becomes just the counter-chant to "Tony Rezko," who was once one of Obama's major contributors and was convicted of fraud and bribery earlier this year.

Amid that question, Rudy Giuliani - beaten by McCain in the GOP primary - swung through town yesterday to offer negative counter-spin on Democratic "unity." The former mayor highlighted remarks by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Joe Biden during the primary that Obama did not have the experience to lead. The McCain camp's spoof of Obama carries the slogan, "Not Ready '08."

For most of the way through his primary campaign, Giuliani held to his stance that if he were not the nominee, it should be McCain.

But for the record, there was a dark night or two. On Nov. 9, after the indictment of Giuliani's longtime close aide and police commissioner Bernie Kerik, McCain recalled Kerik's nomination by President George W. Bush as homeland security secretary, and told reporters on his campaign bus, according to The Associated Press:

"Kerik was supposed to be [in Iraq] to help train the police force. He stayed two months and one day left, just up and left. ... That's why I never would've supported him to be the head of Homeland Security because of his irresponsible act. ... One of the reasons why we had so much trouble with the initial training of the police was because he came, didn't do anything and then went out to the airport and left."

After a McCain subordinate cited a lack of judgment, the Giuliani camp had a longtime aide fire back: "It's no fairer to judge Rudy Giuliani on the basis of this one issue than it would be to judge John McCain on the basis of the Keating 5 scandal."

And a Giuliani campaign spokeswoman said that day: "Best as I can tell, it's just John McCain's pure desperation in the face of a failing and flailing campaign trumping his so-called straight talk. It is truly a shame that John McCain has chosen to stoop this low."

Now Giuliani and Clinton are the big-name New York surrogates for their parties' winners, needing to tweak some awkward history.