Barack Obama isn’t worried about former Fannie Mae Chairman James Johnson, head of the Senator’s vice presidential search committee. Obama, questioned about Johnson after the Wall Street Journal reported Johnson may have received preferential mortgage terms from Countrywide Financial Corp, whined that, “I am not vetting my VP search committee for their mortgages.”
Well, given that mortgages figure prominently in Mr. Johnson’s resume and since Obama said this about Countrywide in March, “These are the folks who are responsible for infecting the economy and helping to create a home-foreclosure crisis — 2 million people may end up losing their homes,” maybe he should have had a debtor vetter. Compared to a Senator abetter, for example.
Obama went on to claim executive incompetence by saying, “I would have to hire the vetter to vet the vetters.” He then added that the members of his VP search team are unpaid advisers and “aren’t folks who are working for me.”
This is clumsy sophistry. Johnson is, in fact, Obama’s hand picked unpaid advisor…
Oops, not any more he isn’t.
Updated and bumped 12-June 7:59PM
Of course, by default, Obama himself is the vetter who vetted the vetter and, James Johnson would have expected to get a job in an Obama administration. This is working for Obama. Unless we get a new definition for “is.”