Reply #2: Critics Wonder What He Learned. (Boston Globe 2008) [View All]

[chill_wind]

Amid McCain's new status, old scandals stir
Critics wonder what he learned from Keating


By Michael Kranish
Globe Staff / February 28, 2008


WASHINGTON - As William K. Black watches John McCain move toward the Republican presidential nomination, he thinks of a day 21 years ago that he considers one of the most troubling of his life.

Black, a senior federal savings and loan regulator at the time, attended a meeting at which he felt McCain and four other senators pressured federal regulators to back off from investigating the troubled Lincoln Savings and Loan.

"I remain very upset that what they did caused such damage," said Black, now a professor at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, recalling how Lincoln's bankruptcy cost the government $3 billion. Moreover, he said he believes McCain intervened partly because his wife had invested money with Lincoln chairman Charles Keating, a campaign contributor who let the McCains use his home in the Bahamas.

(snipping)

The events of 1987, when McCain met with regulators, and 1991, when the Senate Ethics Committee concluded that he used "poor judgment" in the matter, are only dimly remembered by many.

But McCain's emergence as the likely GOP nominee, combined with the rising volume of anti- lobbying rhetoric in the presidential campaign, has brought renewed attention to the Keating Five case, prompting questions about what McCain learned from it, what he's accepted was wrong, and whether he now is stepping back from some of his own scrutiny of his past errors.

McCain also has faced fresh criticism for pushing the Federal Communications Commission to make a decision in a 1999 case affecting another major campaign donor, Paxson Communications. Responding to recent coverage of that case, his campaign issued a statement last week saying the Arizona senator has "never done favors for special interests."

full text: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/02/28/amid_mccains_new_status_old_scandals_stir/

(bold caps mine)