Critics wonder what he learned from Keating 5
“I remain very upset that what they did caused such damage,” said [former senior federal savings and loan regulator William K.] 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.
The story of how the “Keating Five” senators allegedly pressured regulators to lay off a failing Arizona S&L became a major scandal, and marked a turning point in McCain’s life - the near-death of his political career followed by his eventual rebirth as a crusader for campaign finance reform.
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........
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