And If His Contrition about Keating Is Fake, then So Is His Sincerity about Reform

/in /by

Aravosis listens to tedious McCain conference calls so you don’t have to.

Then McCain’s lawyer dropped the real bomb.

The Keating Five Investigation was "a political smear job on John [McCain]." WTF? He called Howell Heflin, who led the hearings, a "stooge" of the Democratic machine out to get poor, innocent John McCain.

This opens up the entire question of McCain’s supposed contrition. If McCain thinks he did nothing wrong, and that it was wrong for the Senate to scold him for his actions during the Keating Five Scandal, then he isn’t contrite at all, he isn’t sorry at all. He’s learned nothing. You can’t turn a new leaf when you don’t think you did anything wrong. [my emphasis]

I’d go further. As the NRO helpfully reminds us this morning (inconveniently for them, they didn’t get the memo about this latest McCain flip-flop until it was too late), McCain’s entire claim to be since about his mavericky reformer personality stems from his contrition about his mistakes with Keating.

 …his involvement in the scandal is what drove McCain to become such a relentless pain-in-the-tuchus about campaign finance reform, and arguably blind to First Amendment objections. Put aside the fact that McCain sees that his association with Keating was a mistake,…

I guess that whole maverick reform business was just a temporary, politically convenient stunt, then, if the underlying contrition was just an act. 

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  1. BargainCountertenor says:

    Oh, puhhlease!

    McCain was a freshman Senator when he was investigated. And he avoided censure only because he wasn’t a Senator when the bulk of the activity occurred. Now why on earth would anyone do a political smear job on a back-bencher, like McCain was at the time?

    BC

    • bmaz says:

      Pavorotti is singing the right tune. The Senate Ethics Committee was able to skate McCain as painlessly for him as they did solely because most of the misconduct occurred while he was in the House, so the senate refused to effectively consider or act upon anything prior to his swearing in as a Senator on January 3, 1987. The House, of course, refused to go after him on all of the germane misconduct that occurred while he was a House member because he was “no longer in the House and was now in the Senate”.

      And there you have it.

      Fact is, no other member of the Keating Five took the actions McCain did, save for Dennis DeConcini who literally claimed he was suckered into a lot of it by Keating through McCain. And none of the others had the damning personal connections to Keating that McCain did, what with all the many trips to the Bahamas paid for by Keating (grudgingly partially reimbursed years later by McCain after he was in trouble) all the time spent together in Phoenix when McCain was in town from Washington (a lot) and nobody else’s family had invested hundreds of thousands of dollars personally with Keating so as to have a direct financial stake in keeping Keating afloat.

      John McCain is a big fat liar; he was by far the most culpable and most deeply involved with Keating.

  2. GeorgeSimian says:

    I put this in the thread before, but no one’s down there…

    It’s been really annoying me lately that Obama isn’t allowed to get mad about things. I’m furious about this economic disaster and the idiots who drove us into it. Ten trillion dollars in debt and NOTHING TO SHOW FOR IT! 700 Billion and all we get for it is bad debts. I know I’m not alone here. We’re pissed off.

    I would love for Obama – or SOMEBODY – to channel that anger and just set off on McCain. McCain’s stupid economic principles are falling apart as he speaks them. The Republicans were worse than a total failure. They need to be shouted down for their stupidity. They need to be humbled and humiliated. Unfortunately, Obama doesn’t want to be seen as an angry black man. He’s not allowed to get angry at all.

    (McCain isn’t allowed to get angry either because then he’ll be seen as the grumpy old senile fool that he is, but what’s he got to be angry about? That he’s losing.)

    • JThomason says:

      Republicans in Northern New Mexico are getting defensive. I caught wind of two cases this past weekend where Republicans were claiming that they felt like they were being unfairly and personally attacked, asking questions like “what did I do?” What is it really: the lies to war, the financial deceptions, the torture. Gee, who should be accountable. It’s deeply ironic.

  3. scribe says:

    It’s spelled “Tuckus”, not “tuchus”.

    Please, let’s hew to correct spelling.

    After all, if Brokaw’s decided Keating 5 is ancient history, who are we to question him….

  5. drational says:

    Speaking of tedious….
    waiting for the full length video to download.
    Anyone else having problems hearing Robert Bennett’s first 2 stretches of audio in the piece?
    They need to fix….

    • JimWhite says:

      Anyone else having problems hearing Robert Bennett’s first 2 stretches of audio in the piece?

      I thought those were just quiet sections intentionally added to allow the viewer to think about what they have been watching and hearing. Sort of like the quiet pauses on NPR…

  6. Synoia says:

    McMaverick’s behaviour is more like childish outbursts of spite when another senator frustrated him.

  8. FormerFed says:

    I briefed Senator Heflin a couple of times and I guarantee he was no stooge for anyone. He was Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court before he was a senator and was a fine man.

  9. Leen says:

    Are folks having a hard time watching the 13 minute Keating Five Scandal up at you tube? It must be getting hit hard. Can’t access it.

    • Adie says:

      I’d hazard a guess a certain faux-mavericky camplainista orgasnizzzzzzzzation might do anything & everything in its power to interrupt the flow of that utoob.

      Fits the ham-handed brand of anti choice.

      Suggest u keep hammering until you crack the nut, and then try to save somehow eh? lordie. did i just insight to ryeought by antecedent?

  10. Minnesotachuck says:

    My primary memory of Heflin was the report of a comment he made to Senator Ted Kennedy in the cloak room shortly after he got some unwanted weekend press attention. The Massachusetts senator, who was between marriages at the time, was out sailing with his then current squeeze. A paparazzi had hired a small plane and flew over the boat, getting some snaps just as Teddy and his friend were doing the nasty right out there in the middle of Nantucket Sound. The following week Heflin was heard to ask his colleague, “Teddy my boy, when did you change your position on off-shore drilling?”

  11. Neil says:

    The keatingeconomics video is very well done and worth your time. If you can’t get it to run smoothly, go to YouTube page and download the quicktime file.

    Having John Dowd and Robert Bennett in the video talking about Keating’s campaign contributions to John McCain and asserting that of the five Senators, John McCain was the only one to receive both personal and political benefits from Charles Keating is a great touch. Those statements discount public statements either lawyer will make over the next few weeks in theirs attempts to minimize McCain’s culpability in the Keating 5 finacial scandal.

    Money quote:


    “Sen McCain knew the facts because we had briefed him. He knew this was a criminal enterprise. He knew that what was being done was improper. He knew how much undue political pressure – his words, atleast originally – was being brought to bear.”

    William Black is the narrator and one of the original investigators. He
    does a good job breaking it down so that people can understand what happened and John McCain’s role in it.

  12. bobschacht says:

    I think this whole “maverick” thing is lipstick on the pig of “doesn’t work well with others, is not a team player.”

    And BTW, the long sentence in the paragraph beginning “I’d go further” doesn’t make sense to me. Are there some words missing? Or extra words?

    Bob in HI

  13. Neil says:

    “The lawyer deputized by Team McCain to handle the new focus on the Keating Five scandal, John Dowd, committed quite the gaffe on a conference call with reporters today. He claimed that McCain knew nothing about the fact that his wife and her father had invested in a strip mall (Fountain Square) owned by Charles Keating. Dowd today: “It was part of the inquiry, but it did not — John was unconnected to that and unaware of it at the time, and did not participate in it.” But McCain himself testified otherwise at the time. Here’s the video. And, awkwardly, Mr. Dowd himself is the lawyer examining McCain.”

    LINK

    • radiofreewill says:

      This is what it looks like when your ‘team’ is whittled-down to a bunch of utility players who have No Choice but to Say What is Expedient – even if it directly contradicts something they personally did or said – on camera, even – in the past – because They’ve Been on the Gravy Train Too Long to Get Off.

      They’ve got nothin’ – they can’t even manufacture a credible attack.