Obama VP Vetter Jim Johnson Draws Scrutiny

Sen. Barack Obama responded today to news reports that a member of his Vice-Presidential vetting and selection committee received favorable treatment and specially discounted mortgages from Countrywide Financial. Jim Johnson, the former CEO of the mortgage giant Fannie Mae, is a veteran Democratic operative and has served two other Democratic nominees as the head of their running mate selection teams, Michael Dukakis in 1984, and Sen. John Kerry in 2004. The discounted mortgage deals have been the subject of recent media scrutiny, forcing Obama himself to address them at a morning news conference. But his answer was far from adequate in satisfying the inquiries and the McCain campaign was quick to pounce.

OBAMA: I have not vetted my VP search committee for their mortgages. So you're going to have to direct...well, no...It becomes sort of a, um, I mean, this is a game that can be played - everybody, you know, who is tangentially related to our campaign, I think, is going to have a whole host of relationships -- I would have to hire the vetter to vet the vetters. I mean, at some point, you know, we just asked people to do their assignments.

Jim Johnson has a very discrete task as does Eric Holder, and that is simply to gather up information about potential vice presidential candidates. They are performing that job well, it's a volunteer, unpaid position. And they are giving me information and I will then exercise judgment in terms of who I want to select as a vice presidential candidate.

So this – you know, these aren't folks who are working for me. They're not people you know who I have assigned to a job in a future administration and, you know, ultimately my assumption is that, you know, this is a discreet task that they're going to performing for me over the next two months.

McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds seized on the comment that Jim Johnson and the selection committee, "aren't folks who are working for me," calling it, "preposterous."

"It's preposterous for Senator Obama to claim that the leader of his VP selection committee isn't working for him. Barack Obama has castigated Countrywide Financial, but now that Jim Johnson has been exposed for taking sweetheart deals from Countrywide's CEO - Obama is in a state of denial. It's that brand of weak leadership and hypocrisy that shows why Barack Obama has no record of taking courageous stands or making change in Washington."

Bounds's statement refers to comments Sen. Obama has made in the past concerning the mortgage crisis. Campaigning in Pennsylvania ahead of that state's primary in March, Obama singled out Countrywide Financial and its executives as, "the folks who are responsible for infecting the economy and creating, helping create a home foreclosure crisis." But Johnson received special loan rates on loans totaling nearly $6.3 million from Countrywide under a program that granted special below market mortgages to friends of Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozillo. Obama did not address the substance of the charges in his statement.

The controversy is likely to cost Johnson his job on Sen. Obama's running mate selection committee. Obama has shown a tendency to dismiss advisers soon after they are involved in controversies. Samantha Power was let go after calling Sen. Hillary Clinton a "monster" in a BBC interview. Obama's Middle East adviser Robert Malley was similarly let go after reports that he had been regularly meeting with Hamas officials surfaced. In each case, Sen. Obama first decried the questions about the controversies as a distraction before sacking the offending staff members.

Johnson's continued presence on the campaign will undercut Obama's populist message of being a reformer who will stand up to the special interests and specially connected in Washington. Given that Johnson's past service to Democratic presidential candidates resulted in losing campaigns in the general election, the value he would add to the selection committee will not outweigh the damage the controversy could cause to the campaign. Johnson will likely resign by the end of the week.