Interesting. On page A3, Joe Stephens of the Washington Post breaks the news about Obama getting a discounted mortgage on his mansion.
Then, on the op-ed pages, not once but twice we see comments that departed Obama veep-vetter Jim Johnson’s mortgage deal with is Countrywide is no big deal and none of our business. (What, did some folks at the Post get the same deal?)
A staff editorial:
Ditto Mr. Johnson. Like many people, he made a lot of money at Fannie Mae at a time when its accounting was messed up. As a wealthy person, he got a mortgage that may or may not have been more favorable than the mortgages available to other wealthy people. Mr. Obama handled the controversy clumsily. But, once more, this episode tells us nothing important about Mr. Obama. Mr. Johnson as Washington insider? Please. Mr. Obama sought the help of a Democrat who had experience vetting potential vice presidential running mates.
True, playing endless rounds of “his surrogate said WHAT?” makes talking about flip-flops look like the Lincoln-Douglas debates — serious fare compared with fixating on whether the vice presidential vetter got a good rate on his mortgage.
The point wasn’t merely that Johnson got a good rate; it was that he got a sweetheart loan from Countrywide’s CEO, while Team Obama had whacked Clinton strategist Mark Penn for having worked with Countrywide. The Obama campaign was left arguing that ties to that lender were inherently corrupting for their foes, but left no moral taint on members of their own camp.
An article like Stephens’ rarely comes together overnight. And the moment he found something newsworthy — like the fact that the candidate denouncing “predatory lenders” got a below-average interest rate on a “super super jumbo” mortgage — it probably got sent up the editorial chain of command and generated buzz in the newsroom. One can’t help but wonder if some members of the Post’s editorial side are trying to undo the damage to Obama inflicted by the news side.
The editors and Ruth Marcus are wrong, of course. In just about every speech, Barack Obama denounces corporate CEOs who run their companies into trouble and then leave with enormous salaries and bonuses. Jim Johnson’s tenure at Fannie Mae was exactly that. And no one in the Democratic Party has ever said so, or mentioned him in a speech as example of the problem.
By donating to Democrats, by having close ties to powerful Democrats, by working for powerful Democrats, Jim Johnson has proven that you can be a bad manager, a vastly overpaid CEO, and you can buy absolution.