The First Principle Is that You Must not Fool Yourself and You Are the Easiest Person to Fool

The final 30 days of the presidential campaign are when the candidates become ruthless in their attempts to smear their opponent. Governor Palin fired a loud, but innocuous shot across the bow of the Obama/Biden ship in Englewood, CO this week. Governor Palin accused Barack Obama of "palling around with terrorists who would target their own country." This is an overt reference to Bill Ayers, now a Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who was considered a radical in the late 1960s and early 1970s when he was involved in a group called the Weathermen. This group took credit for placing about a dozen bombs between 1970 ad 1974 to protest to the Viet Nam War.

Barack Obama and Bill Ayers served on an anti-poverty group together between 1999 and 2002 and live approximately three blocks from one another in Chicago. Ayers also contributed $200 to Obama's re-election campaign for the Illinois State Senate in 2001. Apparently that is enough of a connection to accuse Obama of being a pal to terrorists.

With Governor Palin's current problems with abuse of power in Alaska and Senator McCain's storied history of scandal, this could be the first step on a bridge to nowhere for the Republicans. Senator McCain knows that he is losing traction in the polls and he needs a big momentum changer if he is going to win this election. Like I have posted before, the Republican playbook is full of these diversionary tactics. Republicans campaign on issues that their party agrees with to attract the base and they campaign on fear to attract independents (do you remember this commercial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU4t9O_yFsY from 2004?).

Supporters of both Obama and McCain have been calling for their candidate to take the gloves off in the upcoming weeks. Obama has been running a principled campaign by Washington standards, attacking McCain on things they he has said and done in the past and not focusing on the many scandals that have surrounded him throughout his political career. This approach seems to be working, but the Republicans are sure to step up their smear campaign. In case the Democrats are unwilling to bash McCain for his checkered past, I will do it for them.

During McCain's first Senate term, he attended two meetings with federal banking regulators to discuss an investigation into Lincoln Savings and Loan, an Irvine, Calif., thrift owned by Arizona developer Charles Keating. Federal auditors were investigating Keating's banking practices, and Keating, fearful that the government would seize his S&L, sought intervention from five U.S. senators. McCain defended his attendance at the meetings by saying Keating was a constituent and that Keating's development company, American Continental Corporation, was a major Arizona employer.

Keating was more than a constituent to McCain though. McCain met Keating in 1981 at a Navy League dinner in Arizona where McCain was the speaker. Keating was a former naval aviator himself, and the two men became friends. Keating raised money for McCain's two congressional campaigns in 1982 and 1984, and for McCain's 1986 Senate bid. By 1987, McCain campaigns had received $112,000 from Keating, his relatives, and his employees - the most received by any of the Keating Five.

After McCain's election to the House in 1982, he and his family made at least nine trips at Keating's expense, three of which were to Keating's Bahamas retreat. McCain did not disclose the trips (as he was required to under House rules) until the scandal broke in 1989. At that point, he paid Keating $13,433 for the flights. And in April 1986, one year before the meeting with the regulators, McCain's wife, Cindy, and her father invested $359,100 in a Keating strip mall.

Keating had his S&L seized two years after McCain met with the federal banking regulators and was convicted in January 1993 of 73 counts of wire and bankruptcy fraud. When asked if he thought his campaign contributions influenced the recipients Keating replied "I certainly hope so."

Further spots on McCain's reputation include a romantic link to lobbyist Vicki Isleman, several votes and speeches opposing Martin Luther King Day (he now calls this a mistake), siding with Jesse Helms and voting against the Civil Rights Act of 1990 four times, and lying about his stance on the Confederate flag in 2000 (McCain said "I feared that if I answered honestly, I could not win the South Carolina primary. So I chose to compromise my principles.")

McCain has compromised his principles throughout this entire campaign, so how can anyone believe he won't compromise his principles as president?