Considering that he called the meltdown well before it happened, it's very confusing as to why he appears to have associated with Jim Johnson and Franklin Raines (in consulting capacities, no less), two guys with authority who appear to have ripped off Fannie and Freddie pretty badly.
At this point, I don't think anything could surface to convince me that Obama is the wrong choice. But this is not a good sign. Shows very poor judgment in my opinion, especially considering the situation he knew we were in.
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on raines, obamaphilia aside the connections are not clear. see howard kurtz in the washington post:
ReplyDeletehttp://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/09/19/_the_ad_obama_has.html
jim johnson - who ultimately resigned from the campaign -
was hired to help vet running mates. not a meaningless position in the obama campaign but not exactly an economic policy advisor either.
meanwhile rick davis - mccain campaign manager - received thousands of dollars of consulting fees from fannie & freddie to help them figure out how to avoid additional regulation.
given the size of the economic clusterfuck and the number of organizations in the fiesta there will undoubtedly be personnel overlap with both of the campaigns so i can't fault the obama campaign too much on this one. jim johnson resigned as a vp vetter, rick davis is still running the mccain campaign (and received payments through his lobbying from freddie until august {!} a couple of weeks before freddie was taken over by the federal govt{!!}).
a Times summary of the links of fannie/freddie to the two campaigns:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/10/us/politics/10fannie.html
and the Times story on Rick Davis:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/us/politics/22mccain.html
It's a fair criticism. Jim Johson I think is irrelevant. Not only did he not advise on policy but he was only a vetter for a couple days before he got the axe. Moreover, he had vetted in the past so I'm sure he seemed like a safe choice at first site. Nobody vets vettors. Raines you could argue was a bad call, but again, he never met with Obama and only spoke to reps for the campaign on a couple of occasions. As budget director for the Clinton Administration, generally considered an economically successful one although the bloom is off the rose, he seems like a fair person to at least merit a phone call.
ReplyDeleteWithin the context of policy decisions I put very little stock in "associations." I mean, a national politician, certainly one for the presidency probably has conversations on policy with 1000 people in any given year, never mind people you served on charity boards with. I also think Rmissle's point is well taken that when you have a systemic clusterfuck, anybody with expertise is also going to have exposure to said clusterfuck. NOBODY is going to be untied to somebody unclean. I heard people freaking out that the guy charged with disbursing the bailout was a former Goldman exec and I mean, I get the anxiety, but people who know about those companies, usually have a connection with them. So I think maybe it's a "gaffe" but not one that reflects especially poorly. 3rd degree mistake.