Trying to leave behind his involvement in the Keating Five scandal, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and his advisers today declared the whole thing was a "political smear job," and it didn't really go down how anybody says it did.

Well, as the Google tells us, there is someone that disagrees with Sen. McCain. That would be Sen. McCain.

David Donnelly, national campaigns director for Public Campaign Action Fund talks about the revisionism as well as McCain's change of positions on reform over the years.

That seems to put him at odds with what McCain has claimed over the years. In fact, in 1999, McCain told a hometown reporter, "The appearance of it was wrong. It's a wrong appearance when a group of senators appear in a meeting with a group of regulators, because it conveys the impression of undue and improper influence. And it was the wrong thing to do."

 

McCain has often referred to the Keating Five scandal as the defining moment of his career - a moment in which he became a reformer. But the recent twist of historical fact by his lawyer undercuts what McCain has insisted for years - that he learned a lesson from the Keating Five scandal.

Public Campaign Action Fund's Campaign Money Watch released the following ad last week about McCain's connection to Charles Keating: