Johnson's Departure And Obama's Campaign

Chris Cillizza asks whether the departure of Jim Johnson signals a weak Obama campaign. Perhaps, but not for the reason Chris says.

The RNC's immediate reaction to Johnson's stepping away was a press release asking when Obama would ask Eric Holder to step down. Where does the war of attritition end? And why did the Obama campaign, if they were standing on principle, decide to back down in the face of criticism? If Obama's choice of Johnson was a mistake in the first place, then that's one thing. But if the campaign doesn't believe they made an error -- and they don't -- why give the Republicans a trophy head?

Comments

Perhaps, it was Johnson's decision to resign.

Posted by Colin | June 11, 2008 4:40 PM

Okay, Marc, this is now the fifth post in a row about Johnson. It's getting a bit embarrassing.

And why did the Obama campaign, if they were standing on principle, decide to back down in the face of criticism? If Obama's choice of Johnson was a mistake in the first place, then that's one thing. But if the campaign doesn't believe they made an error -- and they don't -- why give the Republicans a trophy head?

Well, the simplest explanation is that it wasn't the Obama campaign's decision; it was Johnson's. That seems to answer all of your questions rather neatly, does it not?

Posted by Darius | June 11, 2008 4:43 PM

One of the interesting things about the Obama campaign is that he seems to have a very deep bench. Whenever someone is causing him too much of a headache, he is able to cut that person loose and get a good person to take their place. For some cases he might want to stand and fight, but it's nice to be in a position where you don't even have to rely on people with even perceived problems.

McCain hangs on to these people much longer because he has a very shallow bench. In the end, Obama's willingness to dump problematic people will hurt McCain more since McCain can't respond in kind (see all the lobbyists and very recently former lobbyists still with major roles in his campaign)

Posted by bsci | June 11, 2008 4:44 PM

When are all of McCain's lobbyists (who did business while on the Straight Talk Express) stepping down?

Posted by In Texas | June 11, 2008 4:44 PM

Not to be snarky, but is Johnson really worth five back-to-back-to-back, you get the idea, number of posts?

Posted by Higgs | June 11, 2008 4:45 PM

Too little info . . . . Johnson may have had some serious problems that were not yet fully disgorged in which case the story would have continued to dribble out.

Posted by Pete | June 11, 2008 4:45 PM

There are inside-baseball stories and then there are inside-baseball stories, but this is truly an inside-baseball story - so much so that the average person tuning it would say: "Obama found out this guy may have been involved in sketchy stuff, and got rid of him. Sounds good to me."

But, and I hate to pile on, the other commenters have a post. You have given this story much higher prominence than it truly deserves.

Posted by Dan | June 11, 2008 4:47 PM

I think it was probably mutual (but really mutual). So it's not clear they gave him the head. I think especially Johnson would understand the problem with being so directly associated with Mozilo, and I can't imagine he wanted to be dragged around in the muchk, regardless of the the truth of the allegation.

So they simply acknowledged the perception problem, and moved swiftly. Maybe should have been swifter, but I hardly see how it could have been. You have to gauge the perception situation before you can act on it.

Should they have known about it? Sure, but who was going to vet Johnson?

I think this is a bigger problem for the party than it is for Obama. In fact, I think it burnishes his image as trying to be squeaky clean.

There is nothing wrong with taking the stance that the appearance of a conflict is enough to get you axed. The problem is, how did this guy get and maintain this godlike status in the party? I really think this is not all bad for Obama. It lets him stand apart from this element of his party. If he had quietly picked somebody else, it wouldn't have been a story. This makes him look principled, not weak, because it was a self-evident problem. It doesn't matter what the McCain campaign's view of it was. Even I, a partisan, was wondering how is this tenable?

Posted by Mike | June 11, 2008 4:54 PM

why dont you send an email to the mccain campaign and ask when charlie black is going to resign?

seriously. you wanna talk about lobbyists and influence? when's phil graham going to resign?

for someone who talks about lobbying reform, john mccain sure has an awful lot of lobbyists working for him, marc.

Posted by jb | June 11, 2008 4:58 PM

Guys and gals, I'm a total Obama-bot, but I read ambinder for his reporting. He's not in it to spin it. He's here to tell us all the little back stories that he gets by actually contacting the campaigns. He's not trying to drive an agenda like most bloggers. He does multiple posts as he gets new information.

I'm too am wondering about the Obama campaign's decision. But you know by doing this, especially if Jim felt he could step down without hurting the vetting process as it goes forward, it gives the Obama people a stronger position to demand the heads of the McCain people. After all, in its response it attacked the McCain people including Carly Fiorina.

Posted by eusto | June 11, 2008 5:02 PM

I do want to reiterate, however: major embarassment for Johnson and the Democratic establishment. Perhaps Obama should go on a major house-cleaning-head-hunting expedition inside the party and amke a big show of being better than either of the two parties. Simply hollow it out and substitute himself and his massive small donor list for the existing party apparatus. And definitely take no more non-policy advice from establishment types.

Posted by Mike | June 11, 2008 5:08 PM

Eusto, you're so full of shit. Ambinder spins it ALL THE TIME. Ambinder doesn't like Obama, and it comes out in his writing. Dude was in the bag for Hillary from the beginning.

Ambinder's way is to find some topic to knife Obama on, then he'll say "Johnson quit - does it mean Obama is a weak?"

The editorializing comes in the chickenshit coy questioning backdoor way Ambinder editorializes while pretending to be objective.

Amdinder isn't a real reporter. Half of his shtick is publishing in full campaign emails. It's intern work.

The rest is partisan hackwork, not worthy of a college paper.

The Atlantic deserves better.

Fire. Ambinder. Now.

Replace the hack with an intern.

Posted by Eric Blair | June 11, 2008 5:08 PM

Jesus H. Christ on a stick, Marc. As Colin and Darius and others in the 4 other Johnson threads have pointed out, sometimes a resignation is just a resignation. Here is the statement which you so helpfully posted (although you seem to not have read it, or you seem to think it is disingenuous/a lie- and if that is the case, could you provide some evidence, reportage, anything?):

I believe Barack Obama’s candidacy for President of the United States is the most exciting and important of my lifetime. I would not dream of being a party to distracting attention from that historic effort. Therefore, I have withdrawn from the VP selection process.

I am extremely proud of my service to Fannie Mae and in other important dimensions of public service. This withdrawal should in no way imply that I accept the blatantly false statements and misrepresentations that have been written about me in recent days

To sum up, the guy resigned because he felt that this story was causing a distraction for the campaign. I'd like to think I would do the same thing if I were in his shoes.

Posted by drjimcooper | June 11, 2008 5:08 PM

If they did make the decision (remember, Obama said this was Johnson's decision), it was because of the particular issue involved -- mortgages. My guess is that Obama is planning to attack McCain hard in the future over his ties to Phil Gramm, whose policies and lobbying can be directly tied to the mortgage crisis. This is going to be a huge story, and may be enough to sink McCain. He doesn't want any of these fake equivalencies mucking up the attack. By October people will be hard pressed to identify the relevance of Johnson, but Gramm will be a household name.

Posted by Seamus | June 11, 2008 5:09 PM

Guys and gals, I'm a total Obama-bot, but I read ambinder for his reporting. He's not in it to spin it. He's here to tell us all the little back stories that he gets by actually contacting the campaigns. He's not trying to drive an agenda like most bloggers. He does multiple posts as he gets new information.

I read Ambinder for the same reasons. Problem is, his last two Johnson posts don't contain any new information.

Posted by Darius | June 11, 2008 5:10 PM

I think it's funny to watch reporters write multiple items about how Obama's association with Johnson is damaging to his campaign, only to then turn around and write multiple items about how disassociating with Johnson is...damaging to Obama's campaign.

You were right the first time; Johnson had to go.

Posted by Dave | June 11, 2008 5:12 PM

Everytime they play with the words of Obama's tagline "A Leader we can believe in" or "that's not change we can believe in," they are reinforcing the brand that Obama is trying to generate. The war is being waged on Obama's terms at this point, so it really matters little what happens in this little skirmish.

How well did "change you can Xerox" work for Clinton?

McCain is running the "nuh huh" campaign. Good luck with that.

Posted by Curtis | June 11, 2008 5:15 PM

Both the beginning, the middle, and the denoument of this trivial affair illustrate one principle: "No drama Obama".

Weakness? Or principle in action?

Frankly, it's early June and no one cares.

Posted by lampwick | June 11, 2008 5:22 PM

Think jujitsu. Tactically they think it is in their interest to concede this one (and time will tell if that judgment is right).

But note that Johnson resigned. They can still consistently hold the line on Holder.

Posted by Chris Dornan | June 11, 2008 5:23 PM

I read Marc for the reporting, too (and he's good at it!), but it's pretty obvious that he really doesn't like Obama.

Here's a little test: Go through the entries on his front page right now and see how many have a pro-Obama spin.

Posted by Joe | June 11, 2008 5:29 PM

Dan - Exactly! From the moment this story "broke", I thought, "this is big time inside-baseball". It's the type of stuff that gets DC media insiders all excited and the wingnuts all a twitter, while 99% of the population doesn't even notice what's going on and, if they do, either they don't care or say, "what's the big deal?" Seriously, this will have negative impact on the race. Count on it.

Posted by OGLiberal | June 11, 2008 5:30 PM

Guys and gals, I'm a total Obama-bot, but I read ambinder for his reporting. He's not in it to spin it.

But in fact he is spinning in this very post! Let's take apart the post and separate the substance from the spin.

Chris Cillizza asks whether the departure of Jim Johnson signals a weak Obama campaign.

This is fine. Not reporting, but a link to an opinion. Not objectionable.

Perhaps, but not for the reason Chris says.

This sentence could lead to actual reporting, spin, total lies, or any number of things. Not objectionable in itself.

The RNC's immediate reaction to Johnson's stepping away was a press release asking when Obama would ask Eric Holder to step down.

Fact. No problem.

Where does the war of attritition end? And why did the Obama campaign, if they were standing on principle, decide to back down in the face of criticism?

This is where we start to veer off coarse. Marc provides no evidence or reporting that the "Obama campaign backed down in the face of criticism." In fact, the subtext is that the campaign was NOT standing on principle, and thus took the expedient route in ditching Johnson. So we have speculation (Johnson didn't REALLY resign, he was fired) followed by innuendo (Obama's campaign isn't REALLY principled).

If Obama's choice of Johnson was a mistake in the first place, then that's one thing. But if the campaign doesn't believe they made an error -- and they don't -- why give the Republicans a trophy head?

I see one small reportable fact in this section: "they don't [believe that Johnson's initial selection was an error]." Ambinder could have written, "sources inside the Obama campaign tell me that they believe, in spite of today's events, that Johnson was the right man for the job." Instead, he subtextually questions the campaigns initial judgement (if Obama's choice was a mistake in the first place), reinforces the perception that Obama's campaign was being cynical/overtly political (if the campaign doesn't think the Johnson pick was bad, why give trophy head), and wraps it up by framing this whole exchange as a victory for Republicans ("trophy head"). When Marc is doing real reporting, he does a good job, but this is not the case.

My hunch is that Marc is a Democrat who will be voting for Obama (but he preferred Hillary in the primary). There is nothing wrong with this. The problem I think is that in trying to play the "objective journalist" he falls into the even-handedness trap. Or he pushes harder against the candidate he prefers so as not to be accused of bias. I think showing bias in certain instances will be impossible to avoid. But this post contained one part reporting to 4 parts opinion dressed up as reporting. This is the issue we are complaining about. I'll also add that if Marc simply came out and said, "I'm for Obama, but I'm being harder on him, perhaps, because I don't want people to question my legitimate reporting/sources" or "I prefer McCain" then we could look at the reporting through the appropriate prism and use that while reading.

Posted by drjimcooper | June 11, 2008 5:54 PM

Whoa:

"The editorializing comes in the chickenshit coy questioning backdoor way Ambinder editorializes while pretending to be objective.

Amdinder isn't a real reporter. Half of his shtick is publishing in full campaign emails. It's intern work.

The rest is partisan hackwork, not worthy of a college paper.

The Atlantic deserves better.

Fire. Ambinder. Now.

Replace the hack with an intern."

Marc, I don't know what it is about you that brings this out in people, but I would say go ahead and shut comments down for good this time. I would completely understand. And I hated it when you shut them down the first time! And I still would totally understand!

Posted by Mike | June 11, 2008 5:58 PM

Also, in a more general sense, this sort of bias is not unique to Ambinder. It drives me crazy when you have "analysts" like Pat Buchanan on the TV "analyzing" Hillary's primary wins toward the end of the calendar (when she was technically eliminated from legitimate claims to the nomination) as "a huge problem for Obama" and "why can't he finish her off?" Personally, I know Pat's bias, so I know that the media narrative he is intentionally trying to push is "Democrats in disarray," "Obama not as strong as he used to be," etc. As a result, I can take his analysis with a grain of salt. Same goes for overly positive analysis/reporting from Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, etc. Reporters are going to have biases too, and I think it is healthier to recognize this, openly admit what they are, and allow that to be one more data point for the reader to consider when looking at the reporting.

Posted by drjimcooper | June 11, 2008 6:03 PM

jb said... or someone who talks about lobbying reform, john mccain sure has an awful lot of lobbyists working for him, marc.

But don't you know that although McCain employs lobbyists at every level to run his campaign, HE is NEVER influenced by them.

He told us so, so it must be true. You know. Straight talk and all that.

Posted by LFC | June 11, 2008 6:14 PM

So after 5 posts about this "issue" I suspect you will write just as many about Charlie Black lobbying from the back of McCain's bus and how Phil Gramm should step down as well - after all he is a lobbyist that is actually forming POLICY in the McCain campaign

Posted by smmpdx | June 11, 2008 6:19 PM

Hmmm. I am not sure why, but I thought this blog was good. At least, it's in my blogroll, and I check it daily. Not any more, though.

Bye bye.

Posted by Joey | June 11, 2008 6:21 PM

I'm glad you keep bringing this Jim Johnson stuff up. It's so-very-interrresting and completely relevant to the lives of average Americans. Also, it's good to know that Obama could keep Johnson or cut him out and it would be evidence of his campaign's very obvious weakness either way. I'm sure McCain is very happy with the way the day's political events have played out.

Posted by Gwendy | June 11, 2008 6:29 PM

Do the words "no drama" mean anything to you Marc?

Posted by Dirk | June 11, 2008 6:34 PM

Was ANYBODY paying attention to this issue other than the press teams at the RNC and Obama campaign?!?!?!?!?!?!

NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Poll Jim Johnson. His name rec is about .0001% nationwide.

Posted by Paul | June 11, 2008 6:48 PM

When was the last time Chris Cilliza said anything remotely original?

Thank God he's not on Countdown.

I love how the media is always looking for some surrogate to signal Obama weakness. Jim Johnson is definitely not the one. Try again, guys.

If this signals anything, it signals that the McCain campaign is so freaked out with their opponent that they want to make every issue a MAJOR issue, no matter how hypocrytical.

They truly run the risk of seeming insane... we're only in week one!!!

Posted by Joe Justice | June 11, 2008 7:08 PM

Marc, you cover this campaign and you can't remember two simple words that the campaign has as it's MO??? "No drama".

Give me a break.

Posted by david in norcal | June 11, 2008 7:16 PM

Let's be fair here: blogs live on drama, not on serious, in-depth reporting. You can't do much of the latter when your role in life is to sit in a dingy office and act as therapist to Andrew Sullivan. Marc has to scavenge for drama scraps where he can. There ain't much drama around, now that Clinton has quit, so, Marc makes do with the carcasses of Beltway stories. You can't expect a hyena to be a lion. You'll find that Yglesias, Sullivan, Douthat and McArdle all do the same thing. The only thing that changes is whether you like the spin they put on it. Same old carcasses, different sauce. Take it for what it is - light entertainment, or change the channel.

Posted by tekelili | June 11, 2008 7:34 PM

You guys better watch out or Gestapo Marc will close down the comments board again!

Posted by ohno! | June 11, 2008 7:56 PM

Because Johnson would have tainted any VP pick.

Posted by Brian | June 11, 2008 8:28 PM

It looks like more folks are catching on to you, Marc.

Five posts in a row about a volunteer VP vetter who got some mortgages that may or may not have been below market rate from the CEO of a subprime lender?!? The McCain camp must be very worried about his "it's not too important when the troops come home" comment.

Marc was pro-Hillary in the same way Sean Hannity was pro-Hillary, as a way to boost McCain at the expense of Obama.

Posted by jjmckim | June 11, 2008 9:09 PM

You'll find that Yglesias, Sullivan, Douthat and McArdle all do the same thing.

Except none of these people pretend to be journalists. I say, get the bias out there for all to know, then we can view the reporting through the appropriate lense. If Marc supports Obama and is playing extra hard with him to avoid accusations of bias, just get it out there and stop playing your own referee (was I too easy on him, is my bias showing, should I attack him more, etc.). If Marc supports John McCain, fine, just let it be known.

Posted by drjimcooper | June 11, 2008 9:51 PM

As always the press vastly overstates the influence of campaign staffers. The press does this because the press always wants to feel important, and they want to think that "extremely important people" are talking to them. Guys like Johnson are, whether they and the press want to admit it or not, a dime a dozen. There are literally hundreds of other people out there who are capable of adequately vetting the Vice Presidential nominee--including the vetter for Al Gore. It takes a JD, some knowledge of finances, and good trial skills.

Beyond that,I don't think this is important because people who vett the Vice Presidential candidates have no say in who gets vetted--that's Senator Obama's decision. So they are not the ones who select the VP, no matter what the press says. Heck from what I hear, the press even got the long list wrong. Why am I not surprised by that? My guess is Obama picks a clean, young politician with executive experience as a Governor. There are seven of them out there...all would make fine choice.

Posted by The Bag of Health and Politics | June 11, 2008 10:46 PM

Look, our team caught Team Messiah employing a known Pharisee who got scandalously favorable terms on a loan while complaints from various members of the Messiah's flock forced several of our Moneychangers to flee the Temple.

You got hoist on your own petard. Now stop bitching. We got our scalp. Someone tell Mr. Sanctimonious that the Jesus Act is wearing thin and, well, starting to get a little old....

Posted by section9 | June 11, 2008 11:15 PM

Way too much time devoted to a person part of a VP search committee. This is Halperin quality. Move along now.

Posted by Coltrane | June 12, 2008 12:12 AM

Lots has been said above. Stuff I disagree with which I can see the point of view and even stuff I agree with which I can see the closemindedness of ... I'll admit, Monday night, after the fifth J. Johnson post, I e-mailed Marc with my disgust of his posts. How dare he call his blog a "reported blog on politics," when he simply was passing along the McCain campaign's press e-mails? How dare he call his blog a "reported blog on politics," when he was focusing on this and not Phil Gramm/UBS/subprime mortgages? And I threw in a line or two about how of course he DOESN'T want comments, when he posts $hit like this...

And then the comments arrived and this "story" continued, and the posts regarding this subject doubled if not tripled.

But I'm not angry or upset anymore. What am I now? Disappointed that the "story" here is being completely and utterly ignored.

I went back to the original story in the Wall Streeet Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121279970984353933.html?mod=Review-Outlook-US
(Sorry, I don't know how to do HTML.).

And the sourcing from the second paragraph jumps out: "say people familiar with the matter."

Now think about this... a "major" story in a "major" paper (owned by Rupert Murdoch now, by the way), which after a few days results in the resignation of the chair of the Democratic nominee's VP Search Committee. All in the result of what "people familiar with the matter" say. Hmm...

And look at the graphic accompanying the story: J. Johnson received these mortgages in '98, '01 and '03. Hmm... all received BEFORE he helmed Kerry's VP Search Committee. Now granted, during those years, there was no mortgage crisis and that issue wasn't part of the dialogue - political or otherwise.

But still it makes you think... isn't the real story here, WHO leaked this story to the WSJ? And WHY? THAT'S the story. Not the drivel above Marc is writing about... "If Obama's choice of Johnson was a mistake in the first place, then that's one thing. But if the campaign doesn't believe they made an error -- and they don't -- why give the Republicans a trophy head?"... instead of talking about how this is playing and who's up and who's down, I wish Marc was posting to a "reported blog on politics" that did a little reporting and figured out what the heck is really going on and, more importantly, WHY the heck these things were going on.

But I think perhaps I am expecting too much... and I should stick to more sane, solid analysis: http://ruralvotes.com/thefield/ Yes, he's become openly partisan but heck, it's much, much, much more of a "reported blog on politics" than this one.

Posted by bigmac | June 12, 2008 2:19 AM

section9, you keep playing for your team. The rest of us are playing for the USA.

Posted by amaranth | June 12, 2008 5:13 AM

Clearly, not much is going on if this story is this "big".

Posted by Naveen | June 12, 2008 9:51 AM

THIS IS GREAT NEWS!! FOR OBAMA!!

Posted by Tim K | June 12, 2008 12:22 PM

The campaign appears to have learned the wrong lesson from the Samantha Power incident.

Posted by horizonr | June 12, 2008 5:36 PM

Johnson is out in the cold.

He tried to join the Disgraced and Disavowed Former Friends To or Advisors Of Barack Obama Club, but there was NO VACANCY.

SRO, and at least a year backlog of applications waiting to join.

Doesn't look good for Jim.

Posted by robert ethan | June 12, 2008 7:32 PM

Marc, do any of you wise pundits get it? The Obama campaign is letting the McCain camp dig their own grave. They probably already have ads in the can about the megalobbyists that are running the McCain campaign. This is a gift that will keep giving and giving and giving.....is McCain really gonna fire his campaign manager (RIck Davis) and senior advisor (Charlie Black)? Nope.

Posted by keep digging | June 13, 2008 12:16 PM