Wednesday, Jun. 11, 2008 By MICHAEL SCHERER/WASHINGTON
Politicians deploy righteous indignation like college students use credit cards—to excess and with abandon. For such seasoned performers, the emotion is easy to muster, and there are few upfront costs. Rail against powerful interests or the mendacity of your opponent on the stump, and the crowd goes nuts.
But there are sometimes hidden costs in the fine print, interest payments not due for months, especially when the outrage is calculated for maximum political effect. And that outrage came back to haunt Barack Obama Wednesday when Jim Johnson, the man running his vice presidential search team, stepped down after the Wall Street Journal reported that he had received preferential deals on mortgages because he was friendly with an executive at Countrywide Financial, which has been tied to the subprime foreclosure crisis. "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," Obama said in a statement.
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1813602,00.html?imw=Y
Thursday, June 12, 2008
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