Charles Keating

In the last few days there has been an uptick in personal attacks by the McCain camp on Barack Obama (he pals around with terrorists, he doesn’t see the country the way most Americans do, he dishonors our troops, etc.). Obama supporters are swinging back, beginning by reviving John McCain’s role in the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s, and his relationship with Charles Keating of Lincoln Savings & Loan.

Check out this site, which promises to release a full-fledged documentary on the subject at noon today. The trailer is there now.

McCain has called his association with Keating “the worst mistake of his life.”

I would assume that the timing of this piece’s release was determined long before the decision by McCain’s campaign to unleash the negative; tomorrow’s debate is, after all, about the economy, and you can bet that Obama will call up the association between McCain and the savings and loan scandal to capitalize on public perception that Obama is more capable of dealing with the current financial crisis than McCain. The question is whether McCain will be able to anser that perception, or whether he will try instead to change the subject—to the war or to Obama himself.