In today's Washington Post, Richard Cohen has a great op-ed in which he expresses his dismay over the Obama campaign throwing Jim Johnson, its former VP vetter, overboard:

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Our show was recorded before the shocking news about Tim Russert's death. We are tremendously saddened by the news and offer our deepest sympathies to his family.

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On MSNBC earlier today, Chris Cilizza was pretty hard on Barack Obama for his dismissal of criticism about his appointment of Jim Johnson to his VP vetting team, saying he did himself "little good" yesterday when he insisted:

"I am not vetting my VP Search Committee for their mortgages," Obama said Tuesday in St. Louis, Missouri, where he was campaigning.

"This is a game that can be played -- everybody who is tangentially related to our campaign, I think, is going to have a whole host of relationships. I would have to hire the vetter to vet the vetters," he said.

The controversy surrounding Johnson:

Republicans had been hammering Johnson since the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday that he received a good deal on a mortgage from Countrywide due to his friendship with the company's CEO Angelo Mozilo. Obama has criticized Countrywide in connection with the subprime mortgage crisis.

The fact that Obama had lost Cilizza, who is a pretty reliable honest broker when it comes to analyzing the small p politics of political situations, led me to suspect that perhaps Johnson would not be long for this world, and indeed, today Johnson has stepped down.

From Obama's statement:

"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," the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee said in a statement.

I'm glad the Obama campaign realized this is not a battle worth waging. The fact is, Obama is likely to be held to a higher standard than McCain is on various measures over the coming months because Obama has staked his campaign largely on judgment and a new kind of politics. Who Obama surrounds himself with, whether in an official paid capacity or not, matters and it's good that they've learned that lesson now rather than later.

Update [2008-6-11 16:4:26 by Todd Beeton]:On MSNBC a few minutes ago, Howard Fineman broke down why Obama had to cut Johnson loose:

Obama picked as his top VP vetter a guy who was a very symbol of the world that Obama claimed to want to change and that's what bit him here and that's why he had no choice but to get rid of him, in part because Jim Johnson...raked in a lot of cash from his various government-related jobs, especially the one at Fannie Mae.

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Jim Johnson just stepped down....Just heard about it.

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Barack's VP advisor needs to go.

Two degrees of separation: The Wall Street Journal reports that a very special friend of Sen. Barack Obama is also a very special friend of embattled Countrywide Financial co-founder Angelo Mozilo.

The Journal reports that James Johnson --  a high-ranking advisor to Obama -- was part of an elite group -- "friends of Angelo" -- who got more than $7 million in special loans from Countrywide. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laland/2 008/06/obamas-countryw.html

June 4 (Bloomberg) -- Barack Obama, in his first day as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, named Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, Jim Johnson and Eric Holder to lead the search for a running mate.

All three have strong ties to Washington. Kennedy Schlossberg is the daughter of former President John F. Kennedy. Johnson served as chief executive officer of the government- chartered mortgage-finance company Fannie Mae, and Holder worked as a deputy U.S. attorney general under President Bill Clinton. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=2 0601087&sid=aKgnDWlDajR4&refer=h ome

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