Jim Johnson resigns from Obama VP steering committee

[TeamJordan23]

Now, I want to see the Obama campaign go hard after McCain and all the lobbyists on his team

Johnson resigns

Obama and his campaign staunchly defended Jim Johnson against the charge that his ties to the troubled mortgage lender Countrywide disqualified him from sitting on Obama's vice presidential search committee, but just pulled the plug: He resigned as chairman of the steering committee just now.

“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. We have a very good selection process underway, and I am confident that it will produce a number of highly qualified candidates for me to choose from in the weeks ahead. I remain grateful to Jim for his service and his efforts in this process,” Obama said in a statement.

Johnson also put out a statement.

"I believe Barack Obama's candidacy for President of the United States is the most exciting and important of my lifetime," he said, according to a Bloomberg report. "I would not dream of being a party to distracting attention from that historic effort."

Johnson also decried the "blatantly false statements and misrepresentations" that he said were at the center of the controversy.

Both McCain and Obama have set themselves high standards of purity while running what are, after all, political campaigns; these feeding frenzies are consequences, in party, of how easy it is to write about internal contradictions and hypocrisy.

The other story out there along these lines for Obama, who -- unlike McCain -- won't raise money from lobbyists has to do with the Democratic National Convention: How it will raise its money, and if a lobbyist can continue to lead its fundraising.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0608/Johnson_resigns.html