McCain & The Keating Five

This title might be misleading, because McCain was himself one of the Keating Five, not a charismatic lead singer with five backup singers from the Keating family.

This is an old scandal, but one that still has relevance. In this day and age a lot of wealthy businessmen are looking for a break as they try to salvage their failed or failing ventures, and we cannot afford a chief executive who has a proven record of making bad choices when it comes to letting business regulators do their jobs unencumbered by elected friends of irresponsible capitalists.

Also, the McCain presented in this story about his relationship with John Keating and the meetings organized on his behalf, presents not the stalwart warrior the GOP wants America to trust with their lives and liberty, but instead a naïve (and then much younger) lawmaker who was either too weak to stand up to his friends or too self-righteous to properly recognize the wrong in his actions. Even now, McCain apologizes for the appearance of impropriety, but not for the wrongdoing that earned him a rebuke from the Senate Ethics Select Committee.

"McCain was the weirdest," Black said. "They were all different in their own way. McCain was always Hamlet . . . wringing his hands about what to do."