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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Skywatcher who wrote (126112)	6/10/2008 11:48:40 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 173976

The Johnson Test Will Obama show us the instruction manual for his new kind of politics? By John Dickerson Posted Tuesday, June 10, 2008, at 1:48 PM ET Sen. Barack Obama Jim Johnson, the man Barack Obama has picked to lead his vice-presidential vetting team, has gotten preferential treatment for personal loans from Countrywide Financial, a company some consider to be the Enron of the subprime mortgage mess. How big a deal is this for the Democratic nominee? The Republican National Committee, as you might expect, is diving for the fainting couches. Here is an assessment, based on three different standards: The Obama Standard Barack Obama called out Countrywide by name on the campaign trail during the primaries. He particularly criticized the company's CEO for his excessive compensation and more generally "infecting the economy and helping to create a home foreclosure crisis," which he linked not only to the 2 million who lost their houses but to school districts that couldn't purchase supplies and pay teachers. This is the same CEO who gave Johnson his sweetheart deal. Obama's aides also criticized Clinton's then-campaign strategist, Mark Penn, for giving PR advice to the company. Now the man Obama has entrusted with what he has called the most important decision of his campaign is wrapped up in Countrywide and tied to the CEO. There are lots of unanswered questions about the Johnson deal, though no evidence as yet that he did anything wrong. But the Obama standard isn't wrongdoing. It's mere connection to the company. By that standard, this is bad news. Since Obama has just held a national seminar for 16 months on changing politics and shedding the old insider way of doing things, you might expect that he'd take these disclosures seriously, if for no other reason than to show that even when it might hurt him, he's committed to letting the light shine on his associates. Nope—his campaign has called the issue irrelevant. Double bad. To: husseinflopNOBAMA who wrote (126164) 6/10/2008 3:15:11 PM From: TideGlider of 126174