Charlie Keating Helps Sarah Palin With Couric’s Tough Questions

(Original Photo; color by twolf)

Charlie Keating keeps crashing his old best friend John McCain’s election party. People are starting to get the picture. Today, Keating arrives to help Sarah Palin get the answers she promised to Katie Couric.

When Katie Couric’s questions turn you into quivering Jello, you have a problem. Houston, Sarah Palin has a problem. In Wednesday night’s CBS interview of Palin, Ms. Couric asked Ms. Palin to explain her claim that McCain was a reformer that championed oversight. After Palin rumblin, bumbin and stumblin through a bunch of gibberish, Couric finally demanded a real answer:
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Couric: But can you give me any other concrete examples? Because I know you’ve said Barack Obama is a lot of talk and no action. Can you give me any other examples in his 26 years of John McCain truly taking a stand on this?

Palin: I can give you examples of things that John McCain has done, that has shown his foresight, his pragmatism, and his leadership abilities. And that is what America needs today.

Couric: I’m just going to ask you one more time – not to belabor the point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation.

Palin: I’ll try to find you some and I’ll bring them to you.

Katie Couric was a reporter last night; that is all you can ask for. Fair questions with a persistence for a legitimate answer. As you can see above, Sarah Palin had a startling lack of rational or cogent answers.

Since Sarah Palin is going to try to hunt down a polar bear examples of McCain "pushing for more regulation" so she can "bring them to" Ms. Couric, let’s help her out. Here is a prime example of John Sidney McCain III working hard on strict regulation; from the November 15, 1989 Arizona Republic :

Sen. John McCain, while a member of the House, twice supported scrapping a rule that limited risky investments by savings and loans, records show.
…
McCain’s efforts came after he accepted at least $21,000 in campaign contributions [and] … McCain and his wife, Cindy, vacationed at Keating’s private resort on Cat Cay in the Bahamas. That was the first of several such trips for which McCain did not reimburse Keating, as required by Senate rules…

McCain, as is so often the case, finally partially reimbursed Keating after getting caught with his hand in the cookie jar by the Senate ethics investigation. And just so it is clear what the nature of John Sidney McCain III’s relationship with Charles Keating II was:

Keating said he expected his contributions to politicians to influence lawmakers.

"I want to say in the most forceful way I can: I certainly hope so," Keating said.

That, Ms. Palin, is John McCain’s history with oversight, so please run this over to Katie Couric now that you know.

One wonders whether Sarah Palin is consciously avoiding discussion of John McCain’s sordid history of chumming fat cat money and then carrying their water of deregulation, or if she is literally so clueless that she doesn’t even really know about John Sidney McCain III and Charles Keating II. It is one or the other.

And, either way, this is the way John McCain pushes on regulation. It is in his history; it is in his blood. And it is never in favor of sound and responsible regulation that could prevent a financial crisis; when it comes to that, McCain is the disease, not the cure.