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?]
