Commercial #1 – “Keating Five”


Visuals are stills of newspaper headlines, shots of Keating Five senators with McCain prominent, supers here and there to underline key points including the payoff line at the end.

(voiceover)

In 1989, John McCain was one of five senators involved in a major scandal in the midst of the savings and loan crisis. The senators were known as the Keating Five.

John McCain took money from a savings and loan executive named Charles Keating in exchange for heading off an investigation by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. The Federal Home Loan Bank Board was investigating Lincoln Savings, a failed S&L whose chairman was Charles Keating.

The Senate Ethics Committee censured McCain and the other four senators for their part in the scandal. Keating went to jail. The Savings & Loan bailout cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars and tipped the U.S economy into major recession.

John McCain’s role in the Keating Five scandal may have faded from memory over time, but one question won’t go away:

If we couldn’t trust him to do the right thing then, how can we trust him now?


Commercial #2 – “Cindy”

Visuals are stills of McCain and former wife Carol intermingled with shots of new wife Cindy, supers here and there to underline key points including the payoff line at the end.

(voiceover)

In 1979, John McCain met an attractive blond woman named Cindy. Cindy was nearly 20 years younger than he was. He and Cindy began dating, despite the fact that McCain was still married to his first wife, Carol.

McCain had admitted to having other affairs outside of his marriage to Carol.

In his book, “Worth Fighting For,” McCain wrote that he separated from Carol before he started dating Cindy. But that’s not the truth.

Court records show that McCain dated Cindy for nine months, before he filed for a divorce from Carol, and while he was still living with her and their children. Court records also show that he obtained a marriage license in March of 1980 in order to marry Cindy but that his divorce from Carol wasn’t finalized until April 1980.

McCain and Cindy married just five weeks after his divorce from Carol was finalized.

This was all a long time ago but one important question still lingers:

If John McCain’s wife and family couldn’t trust him to do the right thing then, how can we trust him now?