Wow, that didn’t take long…..
Obama and his campaign staunchly defended Jim Johnson against the charge that his ties to troubled mortgage lender Countrywide disqualified him from sitting on Obama’s vice presidential search committee, but Johnson just pulled the plug: He resigned as chairman of the steering committee just now.
“Jim did not want to distract in any way from the very important task of gathering information about my vice presidential nominee, so he has made a decision to step aside that I accept. We have a very good selection process underway, and I am confident that it will produce a number of highly qualified candidates for me to choose from in the weeks ahead. I remain grateful to Jim for his service and his efforts in this process,” Obama said in a statement.
Johnson also put out a statement.
"I believe Barack Obama’s candidacy for president of the United States is the most exciting and important of my lifetime," he said, according to a Bloomberg report. "I would not dream of being a party to distracting attention from that historic effort." – Johnson resigns (via Politico.com)
And of course, Juan McSame’s campaign issued this rather lame statement:
UPDATE: McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds emails:
Jim Johnson’s resignation raises serious questions about Barack Obama’s judgment. Selecting the vice presidential nominee is the most important decision a presidential candidate can make and one even Barack Obama has said will ‘signal how I want to operate my presidency.’ By entrusting this process to a man who has now been forced to step down because of questionable loans, the American people have reason to question the judgment of a candidate who has shown he will only make the right call when under pressure from the news media. America can’t afford a president who flip-flops on key questions in the course of 24 hours. That’s not change we can believe in.
Neither is having affairs with lobbyists to the point where your staff has to keep a woman away from you either. Also, anyone ever take a good hard look at McCain’s Staff? It’s filled with lobbyists.
Others: protein wisdom, New York Sun, Balloon Juice, Fox News, The Washington Independent, Rezko Watch and BuzzFlash.org and more via Memeorandum
