Bingo.....

Megan McArdle:

"I have no doubt that this will hurt McCain. But here's the problem with it: John McCain regrets the Keating 5. Indeed, you could say that his entire subsequent career has been one long apology for it. Repudiating what happened has formed the cornerstone of his current career; in a very real sense, it was the father of McCain-Feingold.

Now, I don't like the lessons that McCain seems to have taken from his extremely minor connection to the events of the S&L crisis (even Democrats from the time seem to admit that he was basically just thrown to the wolves to make it look like the Democrats weren't the only ones who had screwed the pooch). And in fact I think that the Ayers connection is too tenuous to be interesting. But there is a nugget of a real critique at its heart, which is that the academic culture Obama belongs to thinks its just fine to be a former active terrorist who has refused to renounce support for the violence committed by his group; that culture has rewarded Bill Ayers with prestigious employment and other positions in a way that it wouldn't dream of rewarding a similarly 'idealistic' abortion clinic bomber. I know it's hard to imagine, but if you're conservative, that seems like a real problem."