Playing the Keating card

The Obama campaign, which has previously declined to comment on John McCain's two-decade old brush with allegations that he was too close to a figure with the Savings & Loan disaster, plays the card today in response to Steve Schmidt's demand that the press investigate Obama more.

From his email to reporters:

# of probing stories the NY Times has written over the course of the campaign about Barack Obama, his life, his religion, his childhood, his politics, his time in the state senate, his time in the U.S. Senate, his family, his religion, his friends, his fundraising and all other manner of associations: more than 40 (see below) # of stories the NY Times has written over the course of the campaign about the last major financial regulatory crisis, resulting in a huge bailout, and which John McCain was centrally involved in with his political godfather Charles Keating: 0

The Keating Five scandal, though, is hardly a secret. Indeed, the story is central to McCain's political narrative. He's called his actions a mistake, and the episode is what transformed him into a self-stylled reformer.

“He has basically dedicated his career since that moment to the cleaning up of Washington,” McCain aide Douglas Holtz-Eakin told me last week.