John McCain has been pulling out all the stops to make people think that Barack Obama was, in McCain's words, "square in the middle" of the housing finance scandal.
Obama wasn't, and McCain knows that.
What we have here is a classic Rovian gambit: project your own vulnerability onto your opponent. The New York Times reports this morning that, if anybody was "square in the middle" of the mortgage meltdown, it was John McCain and his campaign manager Rick Davis.
[L]ast week the McCain campaign stepped up a running battle of guilt by association when it began broadcasting commercials trying to link Mr. Obama directly to the government bailout of the mortgage giants this month by charging that he takes advice from Fannie Mae’s former chief executive, Franklin Raines, an assertion both Mr. Raines and the Obama campaign dispute.Fannie and Freddie were willing to pay Davis $35 thousand a month for two years due entirely to his relationship with McCain, who poses himself now as the scourge of lobbyists and financiers. McCain's blathering about "gaming the system" makes more sense now. He knew this ticking bomb was out there, ready to explode, and last week's lies were a pre-emptive, defensive smear against Obama. Classic Karl Rove. It's not a coincidence that Rove's proteges are running McCain's campaign.
Incensed by the advertisements, several current and former executives of the companies came forward to discuss the role that Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s campaign manager and longtime adviser, played in helping Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac beat back regulatory challenges when he served as president of their advocacy group, the Homeownership Alliance, formed in the summer of 2000. Some who came forward were Democrats, but Republicans, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed their descriptions.
“The value that he brought to the relationship was the closeness to Senator McCain and the possibility that Senator McCain was going to run for president again,” said Robert McCarson, a former spokesman for Fannie Mae, who said that while he worked there from 2000 to 2002, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac together paid Mr. Davis’s firm $35,000 a month. Mr. Davis “didn’t really do anything,” Mr. McCarson, a Democrat, said.
[...]
In an interview Sunday night with CNBC and The New York Times, Mr. McCain noted that Mr. Davis was no longer working on behalf of the mortgage giants. He said Mr. Davis “has had nothing to do with it since, and I’ll be glad to have his record examined by anybody who wants to look at it.”
This must be that McCain honor we keep hearing so much about.
