Obama campaign on Keating

The Obama campaign has responded to the McCain campaign's claim today that Sen. John McCain was the victim of a smear by Democrats in the Keating Five scandal of the early 1990s.

During a conference call with reporters, Washington attorney John Dowd, who represented Mr. McCain during hearings by the Senate Ethics Committee, said he didn't think Mr. McCain did anything wrong, and quoted the committee's then-counsel, Bob Bennett as saying "John had not violated any rule of the Senate or law of the United States."

 Late this afternoon, the Obama campaign sent an email to reporters noting that Mr. Bennett "had a very different opinion" during the Senate Ethics Committee hearing. 

"While the McCain campaign has consistently touted Bob Bennett as a validator for McCain on Keating, it's worth noting that Bennett had a very different opinion during the hearing. Perhaps his change of heart had to do with the fact that McCain has retained Bennett as his personal attorney."

The email then goes on to quote Bennett's statements at the hearing, where he said that of the five senators involved in the scandal, "Senator McCain had the closest personal friendship with Charles Keating."   Mr. Bennett then goes on to characterize various issues involving Mr. McCain and Mr. Keating -- vacations they took together, for example -- as "troubling."

All of this Keating stuff, by the way, seems to be having some kind of impact, according to Politico's Ben Smith, who notes that Google Trends finds "keating economics" to be the second most popular search term.  

Actually, as I write this, it's the third most popular search term.

William Ayers is No. 37