Dishonorable Revisionism

So I watched the Obama campaign's Keating documentary, and it's a fairly good recitation of the scandal, and the connection to the financial crisis of the present.



What's more, the research section of the "Keating Economics" site includes a wealth of information and documents, including personal letters from McCain to White House colleagues and federal regulators asking for them to back off Charles Keating. This letter to then-WH Chief of Staff James Baker in 1985 is particularly striking, if only for the line "I believe it to be unwise, and I think it flys (sic) in the face of our recent efforts to remove the hand of government from the affairs of private enterprise." That sentence alone explains much of the current crisis.

Now, what's been very interesting is the McCain campaign's reaction to this. Rewriting 20 years of history, they have trotted out surrogates, including McCain's lawyer in the case John Dowd, to claim that the entire affair was a classic political smear job on the Arizona Senator. This makes no sense, considering that McCain's very cultivated media image was entirely launched on his admission of guilt in the Keating case. As usual, Billmon puts it best.

But I was around, and following congressional politics rather closely (by which I mean professionally) when McCain first popped up on the political radar screen in 1986 during the so-called Keating Five scandal. In exchange for various regulatory favors, Keating, a wealthy and politically, um, generous, S&L executive, turned himself into the special friend of a bipartisan group of sleazebag Senators, with five in particular, including McCain, reaping most of the benefits. By modern standards (i.e. Jack Abramoff’s and Ted Steven’s standards) it was actually pretty tame stuff, but it was considered a big deal at the time.)

In a sense, the scandal marked the birth of the McCain "brand," because unlike the other four of the Five, he stood up in the Senate and more or less admitted he was guilty (not nearly as guilty as the others, he hastened to point out – but still, he felt bad about what he had done.) This went over really big with the media ("Senator admits guilt" outranking even man bites dog on the news-o-meter.)

Now, if you go back and look, you’ll see that if Keating didn’t comp McCain as generously and vigorously as he did the other four, it was probably because McCain was a very junior senator at the time, with relatively little influence to peddle. But it wasn’t because Honest John was shy about accepting the favors that were offered him. If John McCain had a problem with the way lobbying (i.e. legalized prostitution) was being done in Washington, you definitely won’t find it in the record of the Keating investigation. McCain’s fit of Puritan self-righteousness (or political calculation, depending on your view) came after the fact, once he’d already been caught. And yet, from that single Senate speech sprang the shoot that eventually grew into the sturdy tree of John McCain’s media image.

You have to admit it was a neat trick: Happily accepting the naughty goodies while they were being handed out, but then winning brownie points for admitting he took them – after the world had already found out he took them. But that’s precisely what McCain did. He’s never looked back since.

Until today, when he flip-flopped on his own contrition, and basically used the time-honored political trick in describing an investigation against him as a "witch hunt."

This is the usual move for McCain. He admits his own failures only when it's politically convenient. In the moment he's as dishonest and dishonorable as the rest, probably more. But at the proper moment, he returns to the lecturn and somberly recounts his moral failings, weeping at the altar of honor for all to see, and the media responds in Pavlovian fashion with a handkerchief for their fallen warrior and a flurry of encomiums to his great character. Whether that will happen this time around is unclear. But McCain reverting back to the "I did nothing wrong" side of the Keating Five scandal should make it pretty obvious that to him, "honor" is a coat that is worn only in winter, only when necessary.

Lies Revisited

Brave New Films is out with a new one that has received over a quarter of a million views so far.



McCain is such a pathological liar that he doesn't recognize he's a liar.

I’ve been through this litany before, where I say, “ok, what specific area have I quote changed?” Nobody can name it. … I am the same person and I have the same principles.

Does he mean the position shifts from just today? Or the 76 position changes that have been chronicled?

How about the flip-flop on the question of the experience needed for the Presidency?

When does being a governor or mayor for a short period of time not disqualify your credentials on national security? When you are John McCain and your task is to defend your vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

When does being a governor or mayor for a short period of time ABSOLUTELY disqualify your credentials on national security? When you are John McCain and your task is to defeat primary opponents Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani.

Back in October 2007, when McCain's candidacy still appeared dead and buried, the Senator berated the two Republican front runners for lacking the necessary political experience to handle commander in chief responsibilities.

"I have had a strong and a long relationship on national security, I've been involved in every national crisis that this nation has faced since Beirut, I understand the issues, I understand and appreciate the enormity of the challenge we face from radical Islamic extremism," the Senator declared. "I am prepared. I am prepared. I need no on-the-job training. I wasn't a mayor for a short period of time. I wasn't a governor for a short period of time."

The man has no honor left. He's given it away to Republican maniacs so he can get elected.

UPDATE: Bravo to Joy Behar, by the way, for saying this to his face:

JOY BEHAR: "There are ads running from your campaign, one of them is saying that Obama, when he said you can put lipstick on a pig but it's still a pig, was talking about Sarah. There's another ad that says that Obama was interested in teaching sex education to kindergarteners. Now, we know that those two ads are untrue, they're lies. And yet you at the end of it say I approve these messages. Do you really approve them?"

JOHN MCCAIN: "Actually, they are not lies." [ABC, "The View," 9/12/08]

He then went into his whole whiny lament about how Barack Obama wouldn't go on joint town halls with him, so he just had to base the campaign on lies, you see. Which would make more sense if John McCain hadn't abruptly stopped giving town halls himself three weeks ago. And if it made sense at all. "Because my opponent didn't campaign with me, I had to falsely claim that he wants to teach kindergarteners how to have sex."

McCain Accountability Sighting!

The New York Times went ahead and, in contravention of all journalistic conventions, particularly with respect to Republicans, actually tried to analyze John McCain's budget proposal - and ended up taking a side!

The package of spending and tax cuts proposed by Senator John McCain is unlikely to achieve his goal of balancing the federal budget by 2013, economists and fiscal experts said Monday.

“It would be very difficult to achieve in the best of circumstances, and even more difficult under the policies that Senator McCain has proposed,” said Robert L. Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan budget watchdog group [...]

Mr. McCain proposed a one-year freeze in most domestic spending subject to annual appropriations, “to allow for a comprehensive review.” This proposal would affect education, scientific research, law enforcement and scores of other programs.

Mr. Bush’s battles with Congress suggest it would be extremely difficult for Mr. McCain to win approval for such a freeze.

Mr. McCain said he was counting on “rapid economic growth” to help reduce the deficit. While a growing economy generates additional revenue, several of Mr. McCain’s tax proposals would be costly, experts said [...]

He would “phase out and eliminate” a provision of the tax code known as the alternative minimum tax, which has ensnared a growing number of middle-class Americans in recent years.

By his own account, repealing this tax “will save middle-class families nearly $60 billion in a single year.” That is $60 billion that would presumably not be available to the Treasury.

Mr. McCain also wants to extend many of the Bush tax cuts, scheduled to expire by Jan. 1, 2011. That could reduce tax collections below the levels assumed under current law, and it could widen the deficit, many economists said.

In January, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that extending the Bush tax cuts would cost more than $700 billion in the next five years.

Now that's some straight talk right there. So much, in fact, that McCain's economic advisers had to back off the promise to balance the budget by the end of the first term - now pushing it back to the end of the second term. It's yet another in the string of eleventy billion flip-flops he's produced over the course of this campaign. Here's some of them on economic policy alone:

Economic Policy

31. McCain was against Bush’s tax cuts for the very wealthy before he was for them.

32. John McCain initially argued that economics is not an area of expertise for him, saying, “I’m going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues; I still need to be educated,” and “The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should.” He now falsely denies ever having made these remarks and insists that he has a “very strong” understanding of economics.

33. McCain vowed, if elected, to balance the federal budget by the end of his first term. Soon after, he decided he would no longer even try to reach that goal. And soon after that, McCain abandoned his second position and went back to his first.

34. McCain said in 2005 that he opposed the tax cuts because they were “too tilted to the wealthy.” By 2007, he denied ever having said this, and falsely argued that he opposed the cuts because of increased government spending.

35. McCain thought the estate tax was perfectly fair. Now he believes the opposite.

36. McCain pledged in February 2008 that he would not, under any circumstances, raise taxes. Specifically, McCain was asked if he is a “‘read my lips’ candidate, no new taxes, no matter what?” referring to George H.W. Bush’s 1988 pledge. “No new taxes,” McCain responded. Two weeks later, McCain said, “I’m not making a ‘read my lips’ statement, in that I will not raise taxes.”

37. McCain has changed his entire economic worldview on multiple occasions.

38. McCain believes Americans are both better and worse off economically than they were before Bush took office.

(By the way, Steve Benen's McCain flip-flop history is something of a seminal document that will help researchers and journalists far into the future if they'd take a look)

Today McCain said that he imagined the US was in a recession while proposing the same set of failed conservative policies that got us there in the first place. He also chided Congress for taking a Fourth of July holiday without moving on a housing bill despite the fact that he hasn't voted since April. The man is not only incoherent on the economy, but pretty much his entire campaign.

And it's good that one corner of the media managed to notice. Now, there is a political law of conservation of mass and energy, and for every critical McCain article on the economy there must be something similar about Obama as well - or probably times ten, as every Democrat is always grilled on how he or she will pay for their policies. Of course, as Kevin Drum notes, Obama's plan actually does approach adding up fully, certainly more than any other over-promising politician, but in the media's mind Obama being of by a dollar will equal McCain being off by ten trillion, and the pundits will excoriate both - while always reminding everyone that McCain is a hero who served his country honorably and a fiscal conservative besides.

Social Security Privatization Is Back - Thanks To McCain

There's no question that Barack Obama is going to meet some resistance among older voters. I see it in my own family. And if this race were strictly personality-driven, I would expect that resistance to continue. But considering the fact that John McCain believes completely in Social Security privatization and gambling on the stock market with our seniors' future, I can't imagine how this resistance will hold.

Sen. John McCain didn't get the memo about the Republican charade to pretend their Social Security plans shouldn't be called "privatization".

Last Thursday, at the Loeb First Amendment Award Dinner in New Hamphire (aired on C-Span's "Road To The White House '08"), there was this exchange with an audience member:

Q: Will privatizing Social Security be a priority for you going forward? [...]

McCAIN: ...Without privatization, I don't see how you can possibly, over time, make sure that young Americans are able to receive Social Security benefits.

That was back in 2004, before Democrats successfully beat back Bush's efforts. McCain's on the trail now saying he won't privatize the program, but he's calling for younger workers to invest in "personal accounts," which is exactly the same thing.



Barack Obama is all over St. Maverick today on this, and it's a winning position for any Democrat.

"He said he supports private accounts for Social Security - in his words, 'along the lines that President Bush proposed,'" Obama will say in Philadelphia, according to pre-released excerpts. "Yesterday he tried to deny that he ever took that position, leaving us wondering if he had a change of heart or a change of politics."

McCain's starting to have a pretty serious flip-flopper problem. He's tried to shift on private accounts, he's completely incoherent on illegal wiretapping, he's gone around the bend on the estate tax, and as Steve Benen has amply demonstrated, this is just part of an ever-expanding list.

McCain's core principles include endless military action and occupation. On other issues, he'll say whatever he can to get elected.

Chipping Away At Maverick's Armor

We're actually starting to get some traction on John McSame, not only in the usual arenas but also in the traditional media. I think judging Presidential candidates based on their tax returns is of a fairly low priority; I really don't care how much you make compared to what you'll actually do for the country. But it's notable that McCain is not, for the most part, getting away with the gambit of releasing his tax returns, which make him look only modestly rich, without releasing the companion returns of his kajillionaire beer distributorship heiress wife (the one he picked up while still married to his first wife, who was disfigured in an accident. He's a claasy guy).

John McCain, who has clinched the Republican presidential nomination, reported $405,409 in income last year and paid $118,660 in federal taxes, according to tax returns made public today. He gave $105,467 to charity, the records show.

His campaign didn't release tax returns for his wife, Cindy, who is chairman of the Phoenix-based Hensley & Co., one of the largest beer distributors in the U.S.

"My wife and I, we have separate incomes, we have a prenuptial agreement, and her business is her business,'' McCain said in an interview. "I have never been involved in it since before I ran for the Congress of the United States, so I just feel that she has a right to a separate tax return.''

Come off it. McCain has used his wife's bankroll to get ahead in politics for 25 years. It's obnoxious to suggest that they're somehow separate incomes. Especially after Republicans went after Teresa Heinz Kerry for the same exact circumstance (Kerry eventually disclosed her tax return). And, Cindy McCain claimed she wasn't disclosing her taxes because of her children's privacy, which is kind of hilariously brazen.

But the traditional media actually managed to cover this one in a manner consistent with how they'd cover a Democrat trying to play this game. Again, I'd like to see them be as aggressive on McCain's actual statements, like his revisionist history on advocating for overthrowing foreign governments, which he called "rogue-state rollback"; the very funny flap over which earmarks he'd target for elimination, which got him in a lot of trouble this week once he realized that he was advocating cutting off aid to Israel and shuttering military housing for families; his statement that there has been great progress economically since George Bush took office, and his general flip-flopping on dozens of issues (Steve Benen is the keeper of that long list).

Still, at this point I'm happy to see any coverage of McCain that's not covered in hazy gauze. If the traditional media wants to feed their fetish and look into character issues they can pick up The Real McCain", which the McCain camp is trying furiously to suppress. I'd prefer it to be a legitimate look at his extremist record and promises of less jobs and more wars.

One thing I know is that we're not going to see anything like this tomorrow morning from our buddy Boy George.

McCain Campaign Finance Facade Starting To Break

The John McCain attacks against Barack Obama's perceived hedge on taking public money in the general election spawned some editorials this morning, but this has the potential of rebounding back on McCain in a big way.

It turns out that, not only did McCain accept public money for the primary and then wiggle out of it after he had a shot to be the nominee, he took a loan before pledging to receive those public funds, essentially committing himself to that public system.

John McCain's cash-strapped campaign borrowed $1 million from a Bethesda bank two weeks before the New Hampshire primary by pledging to enter the public financing system if his bid for the presidency faltered, newly disclosed records show.

McCain had already taken a $3 million bank loan in November to keep his campaign afloat, and he sought from the same bank $1 million more shortly before this month's Super Tuesday contests, this time pledging incoming but unprocessed contributions as collateral. He never used the funds of the most recent loan, because his win in the South Carolina primary helped him raise enough money to compete in Florida, his campaign aides said last night.

The loans, revealed yesterday in documents a McCain attorney filed with the Federal Election Commission, offer fresh details about how the Republican senator from Arizona scrambled to secure money as his shoestring campaign navigated a rapid-fire succession of primary contests.

The unorthodox lending terms also raised fresh questions from McCain's critics about his ability to repeatedly draw money from the Maryland-based Fidelity & Trust Bank. Campaign finance lawyers speculated whether McCain may have inadvertently committed himself to entering the public financing system for the remainder of the primary season by holding out the prospect of taking public matching funds in exchange for the $1 million loan in December.

"This whole area is uncharted," said Lawrence H. Norton, a former general counsel of the FEC.

This is really seedy. Apparently McCain only wanted taxpayer money to bail out his campaign and pay his debts if he lost. If he won, he'd rather get his cash from corporations and lobbyists. He basically wanted us to pay for his mistakes. DHinMI explains:

Think of it like this. John McCain secured a personal loan by using his home as collateral. He requested more money be added to the loan, but the bank said it was more than he had collateral to pay back. McCain countered by telling the bank that his neighbor failed to salt his icy sidewalk, and McCain slipped on it. McCain got a doctor to say the slip-and-fall hurt McCain's back, he sued the neighbor, and he expects to win a big settlement. The bank said "sure, OK, that's what happens if you win your court case. But what if you lose?" In response McCain said "oh, I suppose I'll have to get a job," and the bank then said "OH, OK, that's good enough for us!" and authorized the loan.

If McCain used the certification for matching funds as collateral he would have definitely been locked in to the matching funds scheme, including the spending caps. What happened here is that the bank didn't require him to offer up the certificate as collateral. The bank simply accepted McCain's word that he had it and would enter the federal system if necessary, and the bank took him at his word.

John McCain: Lying To Banks, Now That's Some Straight Talk!

This makes it all the more ridiculous for the progressive blogosphere to have jumped on the Obama story from McCain's perspective, when Mr. Maverick is clearly such a rank hypocrite on this issue. In fact, it's a familiar recent pattern for McCain, whose actions haven't matched his rhetoric for a long time.

It’s not as if McCain has been caving in on anything important, like economic recovery ...

(Feb. 6: The Senate votes on a Democratic economic stimulus plan, which would give more help to the unemployed, veterans and senior citizens than the version President Bush wants. Forced to choose between Bush and the unemployed/veterans/elderly, McCain flew back to Washington and — skipped the vote.)

Or torture ...

(Feb. 13: The Senate considers a bill, vehemently opposed by the White House, which would prohibit C.I.A. interrogators from using tactics like waterboarding on detainees. McCain, whose ringing denunciation of waterboarding was the highlight of the Republican debates, votes — no. He says his own Detainee Treatment Act already bans use of physical force during interrogations. This would be the law that Bush, in one of his famous signing statements, said the president did not have to follow.) [...]

McCain’s inconsistency is actually nothing new. We saw a lot of it during the Bush tax debates. McCain opposed the tax cuts as unwise and unfair, and then opposed getting rid of them under the theory that it would be a shock to the upper-income people who benefited from them and never noticed they were scheduled to expire. McCain seems to have developed a kind of right-to-life theory of economics under which any tax cut that comes into being has to remain on the books for all eternity.

This could turn into a real fiasco for McCain, if the blogosphere, the major media and the leading candidates close the triangle on it.

Romney: "We Must Not Have National Parks, Like The One I Built With My Own Hands That Is Vital To America's Future"

You almost can't keep up with the Romney flip-flops, it's like competing in a footrace against The Flash. After practically challenging Mike Huckabee to a fight for besmirching the honor of President Bush, he decided yesterday to claim Bush mismanaged the Iraq war. And then there's this:

I'll have pictures and a few anecdotes from Obama and Clinton later, but I wanted to bring attention to a rather strange comment that Romney made during his stump speech. He began a thread about all the great things that George Bush has accomplished, including lowering taxes (no surprise there) and then added that Bush has "strengthened our economy by getting us off of foreign oil." Huh? [...]

Romney went on to talk about the fact that oil just hit $100 a barrel today and then something about how we buy a bunch of oil from overseas and that we need to become energy independent. It was all said in a very earnest and serious tone, so it all felt very true, but it can't be, can it? I mean, Mitt just told us that George Bush freed us from our dependence on foreign oil, so who cares if it hits $100 a barrel, right?

This is very distilled flip-flopping, and I think if Mitt ends up getting the nomination he could finely hone this even further and take contradictory positions in the space of a single word, as in "The economy is rolling along at a great clip, but we must admit that it is in some areas weakbutstrong."

I Can't Come Up With Another Romney Flip-Flop Headline

The man has literally outlasted my ability to write witty rejoinders. This time it's about immigration:

Romney boasted of cracking down on illegal immigrants as governor and denounced an immigration bill that the Arizona senator introduced with Senator Edward M. Kennedy in 2005 [...]

"McCain-Kennedy isn't the answer," Romney said in a well-received speech to conservatives in Washington this month, describing it as an amnesty plan that would reward people for breaking the law and cost taxpayers millions to provide them benefits.

But that is markedly different from how Romney once characterized McCain's bill, elements of which are receiving new attention in Congress and from President Bush. Indeed, Romney's past comments on illegal immigration suggest his views have hardened as he has ramped up his campaign for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.

In a November 2005 interview with the Globe, Romney described immigration proposals by McCain and others as "quite different" from amnesty, because they required illegal immigrants to register with the government, work for years, pay taxes, not take public benefits, and pay a fine before applying for citizenship.

"That's very different than amnesty, where you literally say, 'OK, everybody here gets to stay,' " Romney said in the interview. "It's saying you could work your way into becoming a legal resident of the country by working here without taking benefits and then applying and then paying a fine."

Romney did not specifically endorse McCain's bill, saying he had not yet formulated a full position on immigration. But he did speak approvingly of efforts by McCain and Bush to solve the nation's immigration crisis, calling them "reasonable proposals."

The Boston Globe actually has audio of Romney's prior remarks, which are only two years old, at the link.

We are experiencing a near-critical snark shortage about Romney's changing positions. Everything that can be written has been written. I'm really getting uncomfortable about it. There could be almost a year more of this!

I guess Romney's promoting recycling by forcing us to recycle old "Romney is a Flip-Flopper" headlines.

Shocking News From The Romney Campaign

You'd better sit down for this one. It seems that Mitt Romney made a statement today that contradicts something he said earlier! I'm simply at a loss that someone so honest and forthright and steely-eyed in his resolve would actually say different things to different audiences! It just doesn't seem possible, and yet...

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney said this week that as president he would allow individual states to keep abortion legal, two weeks after telling a national television audience that he supports a constitutional amendment to ban the procedure nationwide.

In an interview with a Nevada television station on Tuesday, Romney said Roe. v. Wade should be abolished and vowed to "let states make their own decision in this regard." On Aug. 6, he told ABC's George Stephanopoulos that he supports a human life amendment to the Constitution that would protect the unborn.

If we can't count on Mitt Romney to make consistent statements, what can we count on as a nation? It seemed like only yesterday there was apple pie, Mount Rushmore, and Mitt Romney's platform. Simple, clear, unmoving. Say it ain't so, Mitt.

(I guess Romney didn't hear the news that flip-flops can be hazardous to your health.)