McCain may be said to have two main strengths -- his POW status, and his image as a "reformer." Turning the latter strength into a weakness is easier than it might seem, because McCain hasn't always been a reformer -- as his membership in the Keating Five proves. Look at Obama's latest economics speech:
It happened in the 1980s, when we loosened restrictions on Savings and Loans and appointed regulators who ignored even these weaker rules. Too many S&Ls took advantage of the lax rules set by Washington to gamble that they could make big money in speculative real estate. Confident of their clout in Washington, they made hundreds of billions in bad loans, knowing that if they lost money, the government
would bail them out. And they were right. The gambles did not pay off, our economy went into recession, and the taxpayers ended up footing the bill. Sound familiar?
I wonder who constituted their "clout" in Washington? And then later in the speech:
We can’t have a situation like the old S&L scandal where its “heads” investors win, and “tails” taxpayers lose. That’s going to take ending the lobbyist-driven dominance of these institutions that we’ve seen for far too long in Washington.
It would be very daring on Obama's part, but attacking head-on McCain's membership in the Keating Five (which, by the way, is far more direct than Obama's connection to Bill Ayers) might be a very effective attack.
