The full, 13-minute "documentary" has been released. It's devastating:
The first thing you'll notice is the production values. This video has been finished for a long time. The Obama campaign let this sit until it was necessary, or until it fit the plan. I asked an Obama staffer today how long the video had been finished for. He laughed. "No comment." On the political side, it's worth marveling for a moment that the Obama campaign never got spooked and went nuclear from a position of weakness. A month or so ago, when Obama was buffeted by the "celebrity" ads and Palin seemed a juggernaut and McCain was up in the polls, they didn't panic and release this video. They held it. Waited for the fundamentals to change. And when the McCain campaign signaled this week that they were going for a guilt-by-association strategy, the Obama campaign counterpunched with Keating -- what Ben Smith calls "guilt-by-guilt." And not just an ad: A press conference, a documentary, an e-mail to the millions on their list serv. They hit with enough force to control the news coverage. But they waited until wouldn't be seen as firing first. And they did it from the position of strength. They did it protected by a lead in the polls. On the substantive side, they've chosen an attack on McCain's character of direct relevance to the current crisis. As Ambinder wrote, "the Keating Five was a banking and financial scandal. So it fits better with the political environment than sudden attempts to re-raise Obama's associations with Ayers and Wright." McCain will talk of 60s radicals, and try and connect Obama to a man who planted bombs in Washington. Obama will talk of banking and financial scandals, and try and connect McCain to video of McCain giving testimony, and letters signed with John McCain's pen, and news articles detailing McCain's role in the last major financial sector crisis. Some folks think this a simple hit on McCain's credentials as a reformer. It's more than that: It's also an assault on McCain's newfound role as a regulator. The policy aspects of the Keating scandal had to do with deregulation. Deregulation supported by John McCain. Deregulation that John McCain wrote James Baker and asked him to uphold. And finally, it's an effort to control the news cycle. Early in the campaign, they seemed content to let McCain launch the attacks, and to fight back only in response. No longer.
