Mickey Kaus on Obama’s choice of Johnson
The Johnson bandaid comes off. Ouch!
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.
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.”
Do I need to write another verse to “Guys, I Hardly Knew Ye”?
[NOTE: And see this, written before the Countrywide connection became news. With the sort of track record of picking VP’s that Johnson had, why would anyone have chosen him for this task?]
How competent are Eric Holder and Caroline Kennedy? How laughably unprepared is Obama?
Heck! I’m a completist. Why not write another verse to “Guys, I Hardly Knew Ye”? That’s just the kinda guy Obama is.
“Politics makes for strange bedfellows.” 😉
Obama is mistaking a junk heap full of shiny loud politicians for a stable of new ideas. So are his followers.
Johnson had multiple issues that should have kept him out to start with.
He ran the Mondale campaign and has had a finger is choosing ever dem VP since with the exception of the Clinton years.
Not a very good track record to start with but he is still looked at as a master tactician inside the dem party.
He sat on the boards of many large corporations and was on the compensation committees for many of them to determine CEO pay which is a major hot button for Obama.
He is currently the Vice Chairman of the Perseus Fund which is a Soros entity and it also is the parent company of the publisher of the Scott McClellan book.
I dunno. Seems to me, as a McCain supporter, that bringing in someone who would provide VP candidate along the lines of a mafia daughter chosen for her gender, or a multimillionaire ambulance chaser who plays po’ boy, would be a good thing. OTOH, if one were choosing for an actual job, as opposed to choosing for a potential job, not so good to have him doing it.
This also says something not so complimentary about Obama’s personnel choices.
(While Giuliani’s father had a criminal record, this has been known about for years, whereas the circumstances of Ferraro’s father did not come out until after the 1984 election.)
This is a case of the underqualified being guided by handlers. Since Obama has little to no experience, his political staff, Axelrod etc, are calling the shots and directing him. Johnson probably seemed like a logical choice since he has played the “search committee” role before.
This is a case of the underqualified being guided by handlers.
Exactly, Torch. Going beyond Wright, Pflager, Ayers, Rezko, etc., according to what Obama just said about the futility of the idea of having to vet vetters, he’s not going to be caught vetting anybody or anything, apparently including even his own statements.
Obama is pure “store-front”.