Obama’s Backburn

By Steve Poftak
July 15th, 2008

Sometimes fighting a forest fire requires a controlled burn of some acres, thereby depriving the larger fire of fuel. It’s known as a backburn.

If you were paying attention last month, the Obama campaign hired, then jettisoned, Democratic party eminence grise James Johnson as part of the VP vetting team. The story only had legs for a few days.

Among Mr. Johnson’s accomplishments, he was the CEO of Fannie Mae during a period of significant accounting misstatements (which resulted in multi-million bonuses for him) and, after retirement, got a golden handshake in the form of millions of dollars in ‘consulting fees’.

Given the federal bailout of Fannie Mae, the campaign was lucky to be rid of Johnson in June.

I’ll leave you with the words of right-wing firebrand Paul Krugman:

And yes, there is a real political scandal here: there have been repeated warnings that Fannie’s and Freddie’s thin capitalization posed risks to taxpayers, but the companies’ management bought off the political process, systematically hiring influential figures from both parties.