A quick diary on the pro-McCain bias of tonight's moderator. We already knew that Tom Brokaw was the corporate media's ambassador to the McCain campaign. Now via BTD via Atrios comes word that Brokaw believes the Keating 5 scandal--and McCain's role in it--is "ancient history."
The view in question was expressed during Meet the Press on Sunday, in an exchange with David Yespen:
MR. BROKAW: John—we have to keep explaining to everyone—that Charles Keating was the Arizona developer with whom John McCain had an, a, a strong relationship, and then he got in a lot of trouble. He was prosecuted by the Feds, and John McCain said, “I made a terrible mistake here.” Yeah.
MR. YEPSEN: And it’s all ancient history, Tom.
MR. BROKAW: Yeah.
MR. YEPSEN: American voters want to hear about the future. We’re in a huge economic crisis.
Ancient history? So a major scandal that cost taxpayers more than $2.5 billion and that revealed the character of John McCain is out of bounds. What's more, neither Brokaw nor Yepsen realizes that McCain was implicated for unethically pressuing regulators to back off the troubled Lincoln Savings and Loan, which just happened to be run by a major campaign contributor: Charles Keating; it's all about deregulation. That is, there could hardly be an issue more relevant to today's economic crisis.
We shouldn't be expecting either a question from the audience or a follow-up from Brokaw about the major scandal of McCain's political life. How else will Brokaw favor McCain?
UPDATE: A few people have said I'm unfairly implicating him for a simple "yeah," which could've been, said one, a mere verbal tick. Perhaps. But I think Brokaw has long ago surrendered his right to the benefit of the doubt, for his ambassadorship in McCain land, and for this closing remark on MTP, which Geekesque mentions:
In fairness to everyone here, I'm just going to end on one note. And that is that we continue to poll on who's best equipped to be Commander in Chief, and John McCain continues to lead in that category despite the criticism from Barack Obama by a factor of 53 to 42 percent in our latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. Gentlemen, thank you very much.