Jim Johnson Shows Obama Not Ready

Mickey Kaus has James Johnson's number and deserves to be quoted in full as to the perspicacious insights that Mickey has amassed on the serial bungler Johnson [except Mickey doesn't mention Johnson's Target CEO/Chma experience, perhaps because Target is still above water, unlike Fannie Mae & everything else JJ has withered with his purple thumb]:

Obama's Friend of Angelo: Barack Obama's choice of Jim Johnson to vet his VP prospects is already embarrassing his campaign, thanks to a WSJ story reporting that Johnson (according to the NY Sun)
took at least five real estate loans totaling more than $7 million from Countrywide Financial Corp. through an informal program for friends of the company's CEO, Angelo Mozilo. ...

Mozilo and Countrywide were deeply enmeshed in the subprime meltdown, of course, and Mozilo has been denounced by Obama for his business practices and multi-million dollar compensation. ...

a) Always trust content from kausfiles!

b) Obama's response suggests these were "completely above board transactions," which is a little different from saying they were "arms-length" or "market-rate" transactions. Why would Johnson avail himself of Mozilo's "friends of Angelo" program unless he got some kind of special deal, better than the deal Joe Citizen would get? (And if it's so difficult to tell "the factors that went into these arrangements," as the Obama camp contends, then how "above board" were they?)

c) Johnson headed Fannie Mae. If Fannie Mae was really "the biggest buyer of Countrywide's mortgages," should Johnson really have gotten enmeshed as a consumer with Countrywide, particularly if it was hard to tell if he was getting a special deal or not?

d) I don't know if Mozilo is a benevolent genius or evil. I saw him at a conference once and he's clearly an impressive person. But it's also quite clear that Obama has made him a symbol of the subprime mess, as McCain has noted. Update: As the RNC has been pointing out, Obama's campaign previously attacked Hillary strategist Mark Penn because he did some P.R. work for Countrywide--and attacked Hillary's campaign because it took contributions from representatives of Countrywide. ** (Now-embarrassing self-righteous David Plouffe quote below.)

e) Johnson was an atrocious, tin-eared choice on many other grounds. He's a symbol of old Democratic elites--the Mondale Restoration!--and of Beltway business as usual. He's gotten obscenely rich off of public service while pursuing a failed liberal antipoverty theory (community develpment) and taking credit for spreading around other peoples money. He failed to catch Geraldine Ferraro's problems before they blew up on Mondale. He helped lead Fannie Mae into a multi-billion dollar debacle (even though he let his successor catch most of the blame). He said Mozilo's firm had "done a brilliant job of insulating itself for the down cycle" shortly before Mozilo's firm was clobbered in the down cycle, eventually selling itself to Bank of America for about a tenth of it's former value, according to the Sun.

Although Mickey left out Target & the sleazy use of unions and other Dem resources to bash Wal-Mart, Target's biggest rival, there is a lot of chin-scratching as to why this veritable poster-boy for old Dem moral sleaze & ethical laxity was the HEAD of Obama's VEEP search.

Did Obama not know of Johnson's reputation as a behind-the-scenes bag man for various Dem causes, a sort of George Soros precursor? Or lets let Mickey continue in his own words, and the bold sentences are in the original:

Why would Obama, in his first big personnel decision, choose a paleoliberal greedhead with a track record of failure? You tell me! He's described Johnson as "a friend." It looks as if he was at best highly susceptible to amicable overtures from someone he about whom he should have retained some critical perspective.
f) Is Obama really going to let this story drag out all week? Are Johnson's allies so powerful he must be protected--the way Rev. Wright was protected, for a time? Why not say "This is not the Jim Johnson I know" and throw him overboard? Remember the Parable of the Band-Aid. ...
**--From WaPo back in March:
"Obama aides also said Clinton is in no position to stiffen oversight after taking contributions from mortgage industry lobbyists, including funds from representatives of Countrywide, which has been at the center of the mortgage meltdown. 'If we're really going to crack down on the practices that caused the credit and housing crises, we're going to need a leader who doesn't owe these industries any favors,' campaign manager David Plouffe said." [E.A.]

Hmmm...... Wright was "a friend." Johnson was "a friend." Rezko is "a friend."

With friends like that, Obama needs no enemies. Indeed, he's his own worst enemy.