… seems to be confusing a lot of people. Glenn Greenwald (broken clock, yada yada) has put together an explanation that seems pretty convincing:

It was Dodd who did everything possible — including writing and advocating for an amendment — which would have applied the limitations on executive compensation to all bailout-receiving firms, including AIG, and applied it to all future bonus payments without regard to when those payments were promised. But it was Tim Geithner and Larry Summers who openly criticized Dodd’s proposal at the time and insisted that those limitations should apply only to future compensation contracts, not ones that already existed. The exemption for already existing compensation agreements — the exact provision that is now protecting the AIG bonus payments — was inserted at the White House’s insistence and over Dodd’s objections.

Yesterday, a CNN producer asked Dodd if he had anything to do with the modification that the White House wanted, and Dodd said, “Absolutely not.” Of course, it turns out that Dodd did have something to do with it: He agreed to modify his amendment to satisfy the White House. As he told CNN today, he made the change because, “The alternative was, of course, losing the [executive-compensation] amendment entirely, which was a possibility.” (It was a possibility because, Dodd claims, the administration would have instructed one of the stimulus-bill conferees to remove it.)

Did Dodd lie to CNN? Maybe. Or maybe he just didn’t understand the question. Look, it’s hard to have any sympathy for Dodd — the sweetheart mortgage deals, the Irish cottage, the self-righteous grandstanding, etc. And as for the policy at hand, I agree more with Geithner and Summers than Dodd. But as for the politics, this AIG thing is blowing up in Obama’s face, and it looks an awful lot like his administration is trying to make Dodd the fall guy. I’m not so sure Republicans (or conservatives) should help.