Well, well, well, Mr. Scheiber has entered into Mr. Crowley's defensive crouch for him. Congrats, Noam!

Honestly,  McCain has already been in the sewer for so long that it wouldn't make any sense to wait, esepcially with the Keating material that is directly related to our current financial crisis.  Why give the Ayers foolishness any opportunity for oxygen when you can pummel McCain on a scandal and the economy in one fell swoop?  This isn't a diversion, it is taking the long view of the economy and McCain's inability to actually do anything regarding the economy.  You see, Obama's attack has the added benefit of actually being relevant.

Obama is getting hammered on cnn right now.  The problem is that the online video takes too long to connect the dots with the current scandal and so they won't report on how the scandal is linked to today.  The storyline on tv is that Obama is going after him on a 16 year old issue, rather than continuing to focus on the economy.  Obama: people don't have 13 minute attention spans anymore.  

This is arguably the one attack that *everyone* knew McCain was going to bring, and that he would save it for the end of the campaign in order to disallow Obama the time to undo any damage. Obama has probably had this canned response ready for several months now, simply waiting for this day to arrive.

As for waiting and developing a campaign narrative, I think the more poignant narrative is to tie McCain into the S&L scandal and point out the obvious pattern of fiscal ineptitude and malfeasance. Is there a better time than the eve of America losing its pension plans to point out that McCain was intimately involved with the last crisis which similarly wiped out many people's life savings?

I'm no expert, but I'd say that all the relevant dots are sitting on the page, and Obama is left with the simple task of connecting them; the resulting picture should speak for itself.

Obama getting hammered on CNN is like Obama getting hammered on CNN for just about anything.  They've been wrong for a while, so it really doesn't matter much.  The video and the website are not for the publics direct consumption anyway.  They're to drive the media narrative, because even to explain how the video is too long they'll have to tell what the K5 scandal is.

What the hell - he was winning without it, why start slinging mud now?

Charlie Keating isn't ancient history, he's old, 85, but not ancient. And he's unrepentant. And he's tied to current events through his close relationships with the Cincinnati Republican mafia. He lives in Indian Hill, zip code 45243, the same neighborhood as Carl Lindner (i.e., Chiquita Banana scandals, Stan Zax, Iran-Contra, etc.), Mercer Reynolds, III (Bush Sr.'s, Bush Jr.'s and now McCain's top money wrangler), Rob Portman, and don't be surprised if you run into Boehner, this is where he stops for cocktails when he's in town.

This is the 'hood for some of America's premier financial pirates, the guys who made a killing in the S&L scandal, and who will come out ahead, as always, as the economy tanks.

(The easiest way to steal from a bank is to own a bank. The easiest way to steal from the government is to run the government.)

Keating and Lindner also had close ties to Stan Zax's cousin, Michael Milken (all with ties to Tisch, Boesky, Steinberg and other world-class market manipulators.)

The timing on this leads me to guess that Team Obama has something heavier.  Like, "Palin wants to talk terrorists and religious nutters?  Alright, let's do this thing..." and busting out the secessionist and anti-Semitic cards.  It's a shot across the bow with a full broadside. To make the obligatory "Chicago way" joke, Team McCain tried to shank Team Obama, and T.O. pulled out a gun and shot them in the kneecap.  The warning is implicit: Limp away or the next one goes in your face.

I disagree about the nature of Obama's Keating offensive. What's so unwise about a tit-for-tat strategy when 1) your polling is strong enough that even your opponent concedes you'd win if the election were held today, 2) the narrative of McCain's weakness on economics seems fairly locked in at this point, and 3) your oppo on him is fresher and more relevant than his on you?

Make no mistake, we've haven't seen the last of Keating by a long shot. By definition, a 13-minute documentary is not intended for mass consumption. Instead, Obama is setting up a political cost for each of McCain's Ayers plays. Tonight of course the stock market plunge will dominate the news, but now the networks will not have time to delve into Obama & Ayers. Instead, the narrative will be "McCain went negative over the weekend, and Obama responded with Keating." And in the future, for as long as McCain cares to dwell on Ayers, Obama can simply parry with Keating, and dilute the evening news. That documentary can easily be cut up into 30-second commercials ad nauseum, and so long as the Keating line of attack has longer staying power at this point than Ayers does, Obama effectively neutralizes it.

The reason he can adopt this strategy now is because narratives and first impressions have set in. The fissures of this election have crystalized. Obama's brand is more robust than it was over the summer, and can withstand the tussles of the final month.

"By definition, a 13-minute documentary is not intended for mass consumption. Instead, Obama is setting up a political cost for each of McCain's Ayers plays."

Thank you, primwallflow, for bringing some smart, insightful ideas to this topic.

I'm not convinced that the timing is bad. McCain announced over the weekend he was going to drop the rest of the way into the gutter. This may be Obama's way of saying, if you go down there you will get a punch in the face right away. If you wait a few days for "palling around with terrorists" to cause damage, it doesn't get any better. So I think an immediate and hard counter-punch is the least bad alternative.

What he needs to do, though, is link the Keating 5 to McCain's response to the financial crisis, or his calls for deregulation.

Jeff Frey: And he needs to link Keating to the current Republican market manipulators, who also happen to be fundraisers for McCain.

Keating has close ties to Carl Lindner and Rob Portman (and Boehner and Mercer Reynolds, III), all living in Indian HIll, Cincinnati, 45243.

Keating isn't ancient history. He, Lindner, Portman, Reynolds, Boehner et al are the A-Team of financial pirates.

blog.washingtonpost.com/.../the_case_for_rob_portman.html

No.  Waiting.

Never.  Never, never, never.  If the whole Swiftboat disgrace taught us nothing else, it taught us that you never, ever let the smear narrative take hold.  Ever.

I really hope this is the worst they got, and they've blown it early, the political equivalent of a nervous, fumbling teenager.  And I fully support a hard, fast and merciless retaliation.

JEFF: McCain feasting on the detritus in the cesspool:

"I don't need any lessons in being honest with the American people, and if I did, I wouldn't seek it from a Chicago politician. . . . There's much we don't know about Senator Obama. For a guy who has authored two memoirs, he's not an open book. Who is the real Barack Obama?

Most politicians have to answer questions about their past, but for Sen. Obama, the usual rules don't apply. He thinks he's above it all . . . His campaign had to return $33,000 in illegal foreign funds from Palestinian donors, and this weekend, we found out about another $28,000 in illegal donations. Why has Senator Obama refused to disclose the people who are funding his campaign? Again, the American people deserve answers."

What this requires is not just a hard counterpunch; to quote Bugs Bunny, "this means war".  Now, there should be no mercy in dismantling the charlatan POWPOW's persona and the Palin's emptiness.  No quarter to be given to this odious pair.

I'll also say this is probably not a bad move on Obama's part.

For one thing, he doesn't want to be Kerry redux, not responding to the Swift Boat Liars for Hate until it's too late.  Second, McCain is in a weakened position, and if Obama's got any brains at all he's going to go for a knockout whenever there's an opening.  You try to hit me, I *will* hit you.  

Also, the video appears to have a little sidebar which provides a nice neat soundbite-sized summary of Keating and simple equation of Keating to current crisis, so that even if traffic is so heavy one can't even see the video (happening to me at this very moment), you've got the ad-ready quip "and in both cases, John McCain's judgment and values have placed him on the wrong side of history" ringing in your eyes, so to speak.  There's just a month left in this campaign (thank whatever deity you choose for that!), no point in letting any attacks fester unchallenged.

I did enjoy the nice colorful Chicago metaphor, jfelliott

Completely tangential, but...how long has it been, if ever, that a *documentary*--even a mini-documentary--has been a campaign tactic?

Obama is absolutely correct to respond immediately.  Any delay in responding to a smear is a sign of weakness, maybe even an admission that the smear was correct, and allows the smear time to dominate the news.

Now he -- or surrogates -- should pile it on:  McCain's systematic lies (which show bad character), Troopergate, Cindy's mafia connections, Palin's affair, Palin's kids' drugs and sex (evidence that Palin is not much of a Mom after all), creationism, library censorship, 150 plus lobbyists on McCain's staff, McCain's addiction to craps, the divorce of a handicapped wife, Ross Perot't observations about McCain (Perot hates him), McCain's ignorance about economics, flip flops,  and McCain's entire voting record, particularly votes against funding renewable energy and vets benefits.  Pile it on -- with the constant message:"Simply Unqualified."

Attack, attack, attack.  With a constant theme -- McCain is a hothead ...reckless, impulsive, uninformed and dishonest.

Both you and Jason are wrong about this and its because you are reporters following the race and get all the information that the campaigns are putting out.  What the Obama people did was treat this as an argument for supporters - they sent and email, and posted a website - but they didn't, as you put it, use "medieval weaponry"

That would have meant that the candidate would have focused an event on it, they would have run a TV spot on it, and done other paid media.  That's the point - deployment of weapons only really matters to voters if its the candidate talking or if its paid media

OTOH, the McCain campaign held a press conference with is Keating lawyer, ran an TV spot attacking Obama a "dishonorable', has had the VP candidate trafficking in rumors worthy of anonymous emails, and had the candidate himself attack the honesty of a "Chicago politician"

Obama?  He talked about the economy today - and on TV voters are seeing numerous ads about health care.

That's the full picture of what's going on in the race.  But the Obama people clearly realize that the press was gonna focus on the "associations" attack - so they deployed counter measures.  Not response in kind

I think they decided to roll it out just before the second debate in order to get McCain nice and angry. The strategy was similar before the first debate when they put out ads questioning McCain's honor. McCain is intensely touchy about his honor and having it questioned is intolerable to him, even when he deserves it. So he futher fulfills the "angry and erratic" labels that the Obama campaign has given him.

I agree with dsimpson, that this was partly done to get McCain angry for the debate. Which is worth every penny they put into that documentary. Which does, btw, link the S&L scandal to today's current woes.