Marc Ambinder suggests it may be harder than it sounds to dump James Johnson and shut down the growing scandal because ” [i]n supervising the vice presidential process, Johnson has put together independent teams of lawyers and a full staff; only he really knows how all the parts fit together.” Well, this seems all the more reason to do this now, so they can redo the process, cut their losses and stem the media firestorm. But a better question is how did this happen — why didn’t anyone vet Johnson?

I am beginning to suspect that the vetting and checking process is deficient in general at the Obama camp, in part perhaps because they feel there is no need to be extra careful. They throw out “facts” — like McCain favored the Bear Stearns deal and Obama did not — which are easily disproven. They bollix themselves up on Jerusalem policy and they can’t seem to get simple historical facts correct. The gaffe machine is not just the candidate’s fault, it’s the absence of a detail-oriented and professional staff that cares about getting it right.

Part of that, no doubt, is a false sense of security developed living in a media cocoon. But with so many media outlets and information so readily available on everything from summit history to appointees’ biographies, mistakes are going to be discovered. So perhaps rather than just throwing Johnson overboard it may be more productive to examine their entire fact-checking and vetting operation. In politics, unlike memoirs, facts and accuracy matter.

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 9th, 2008 at 5:00 PM and is filed under Contentions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.