I feel badly about this, but this is one of those stories that would absolutely be hamemred by the Republican noise machine. Al Gore was tarred as a prevaricator, Kerry as a flip-flopper and this would have given the ammo necessary to call Obama a hypocrite. Not by McCain but by his §529 surrogates. He needed to resign and Sen. Obama needed to accept it.

At a minimum this prevents the "story" from dominating a news cycle but ideally it even gives Obama more street cred as a reformer and one who will viciously weed out anything that presents even the appearance of impropriety. This should provide a nice contrast against John McCain and all the lobbyists he has been in bed with, literally or figuratively.

This was the classic inside the Beltway story that was fascinating only to bored Washington journalists who were uninterested in reporting on issues like the imploding economy or environmental degredation or the insane war on Iraq. What a non-story.

Johnson did the right thing in resigning from his volunteer position. His departure will make little difference to Obama's search for a VP, but his continued presence could have disgruntled the punditry who like to read from the GOP talking points.

...this is ALMOST as bad as Samantha Power having to leave the campaign because she had the foresight - uh, I mean "gall" - to call Hillary Clinton a monster.

No one wants to be too quick to throw good people overboard, but the housing/credit crisis is one of the top 2 or 3 domestic political hot-buttons.

According to Johnson's Wikipedia entry, he left Fannie Mae in 1998, before the bad lending got started. Assuming that everything he did was above-board, it would be way too complicated to try to explain it.

I hadn't noticed this issue getting a lot of traction in the MSM but it's something that Obama doesn't need.

At a minimum this prevents the "story" from dominating a news cycle but ideally it even gives Obama more street cred as a reformer ...

This is where it's at. The GOP will smear Obama with all kinds of claims that he's "just another politician" (meaning, as corrupt as their guy) whether or not they have even a superficially supportable claim. Whether or not Obama actually has anyone in his campaign who's a liability won't matter.

What does matter is how well Obama can pitch a proactive counter-presentation of himself. In that respect, it absolutely does matter who is or isn't on board his campaign — and most of all it matters that Obama be the one to get there first, before the story takes on a life of its own.

Holy Crap! Obama keeps surrounding himself with people who are bringing his campaign down.

He'd better start doing a better job screening his people or his in for SERIOUS trouble!!!

You are absolutely right. I am pleased to announce that the Obama campaign is going to Vet the Vettters of the people who have been hired to Vet the Vetters of the team that they brought in to Vet the Vetters of the group that is currently in place to Vet the Vetters of the small cadre of folks that is currently Vetting the Vice Presidential Candidates.

All things considered, there have been very few people so far who've had to leave the Obama campaign. Running for president is such a large and complicated process, involving so many people -- who are each connected in various ways to so many other people -- that it'd be a miracle if there weren't a few people who could best serve by bowing out gracefully.

Who vets the vetters? Who vets the people who vet the vetters? At some point it gets silly, and the best you can do is have some kind of policy about how to handle things when it turns out you're working with fallible humans rather than a collection of saints.

Maybe someone should have seen this information about Johnson and recognized it as the vulnerability it was before they let him start the process. But the important thing now is that he's out of the way.

This guy, who has done nothing wrong, resigns from helping vet people for Obama - as a volunteer job, but Phil Gramm, who was actually lobbying for banks involved in the mortgage mess while advising McCain - he gets a pass? Where is the outrage about Gramm? I've seen exactly one story about how Gramm was working for one of the prime movers in the mortgage mess. Just the one - everything else I have read about online. This is pathetic.

Now is the time that we try to convince Clinton supporters to vote for Obama, not reaffirm their sadly understandable belief that Obama supporters are total assholes.

I'll add that to my long list of reasons to vote for Obama over McCain. This sort of thing does matter, even if it's counted as "news" when it happens in a Dem campaign and "dog bites man" in a Repub campaign.

Obama must stop inflicting unnecessary, unforced wounds on himself. I was very puzzled when I first found out that Jim Johnson would be heading his V.P search group. Why appoint a Washington insider when you ran against Washington insiders? Didn't he anticipate that the corporate media and the GOP slime machine would jump all over him? This is very puzzling when you consider how intelligent and savvy he really is.

@ jamartinjr and bearpaw1,

I'm not trying to make a point but, MAN, SO much negative publicity is something Obama doesn't need right now. It will make it that much harder for him.

And before you jump on me, I really don't care who wins the election as I don't like either of the candidates running and most likely will not vote.

So I don't have a dog in this fight...just making an observation.

Hmmmm. Could be that's just one more myth to add to the list of his alleged attributes.

Why James Johnson in the 1st place? Oh yeah, he had a lot of success as a member of the vetting team for Mondale in 1984 and Kerry in 2004. We all know how those campaigns ended.

And excuse me - just what are Caroline Kennedy's credentials to be one of 3 members of the vetting team? I guess it's the payback for her & Uncle Teddy anointing Obama with the Kennedy Mantle.

This Kennedy Mantle fittingly resembles the one "worn" by the Emperor in Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale - "The Emperor's New Clothes."