This, when added to the sleazy attacks on Obama that the McCain camp is rolling out, makes me wonder what the hell happened to the John McCain I was so fond of in 2000.

McCain Lawyer: McCain Did Nothing Wrong Amid Keating Five Scandal
By TPM’s Eric Kleefeld - October 6, 2008, 1:44PM

For years, John McCain made elaborate displays of public contrition about his involvement in the Keating Five scandal, admitting that he made errors in judgment when he lobbied regulators on behalf of a corrupt banker who eventually went to prison. But now his campaign is suddenly saying that McCain did nothing wrong.

On a conference call with reporters this afternoon, held in response to the Obama campaign’s ramped-up attacks on McCain’s involvement in the scandal, the campaign brought out attorney John Dowd, who served as McCain’s counsel at the time. Dowd declared that he vehemently disagreed with the judgment of the Senate Ethics Committee that McCain had made some serious mistakes. “That’s not something that as his counsel I accepted,” Dowd said.

Dowd singled out the late Sen. Howell Heflin (D-AL), who vocally criticized McCain at the time, for particular scorn. “But you know, Sen. Mitchell was the majority leader, and Howell Heflin was his stooge,” said Dowd. “And he was doing what he was told because the rest were Democrats in the hearing. So it’s sort of a classic political smear-job on John.”

The odd thing is that McCain himself has written that the Keating Five period was a dark time in his life, and that he himself believed he’d made serious errors in judgment. So is it the McCain campaign’s position that this contrition is no longer operative?

Talking Points Memo had the audio