Let's talk about Judgment again.

Glen Reynolds: I think we're seeing a pattern of poor judgment here.

MICKEY KAUS: "Barack Obama's choice of Jim Johnson to vet his VP prospects is already embarrassing his campaign . . . Johnson was an atrocious, tin-eared choice on many other grounds. He's symbol of old Democratic elites--the Mondale Restoration!--and of Beltway business as usual. He's gotten obscenely rich off of public service while pursuing a failed liberal antipoverty theory (community develpment) and taking credit for spreading around other peoples money. . . . Why would Obama, in his first big personnel decision, choose a paleoliberal greedhead with a track record of failure? You tell me. He's described Johnson as "a friend." It looks as if he was at best highly susceptible to amicable overtures from someone he should have had some critical perspective on."

For a man that touts his judgment... you'd think Obama can pick better people.

Or at least better excuses when he gets found out.

I am not vetting my VP Search Committee for their mortgages. You’re going to have to direct – it becomes sort of a – this is a game that can be played – everybody, who is tangentially related to our campaign, I think, is going to have a whole host of relationships.

The man heading up his VP search is "tangentially related". Wow.

Would you have someone on your VP search Committee that's got anything shady in his past? Especially if you were running as a Washington outsider?

If you were running would you honestly think the people helping your find your vice president aren't "working for you" or only "tangential" to the process? Even if you thought at much, wouldn't you make sure everyone working for you was as clean as possible? Especially if you were exposing lobbyists and such with the opposition and their staff.

Here's a video of Obama's confused excuses, and some commentary picking it apart.


Do we think Obama will suddenly get better at picking people once he's in office?
Or will we get more "The Secretary of State is a governmental position and not paid out of my pocket. I picked him for the discrete purpose of running the State department, and not on his methods of personal wealth building, legal or otherwise."

I guess that works given this scenario envisioned by Mark Steyn

Only this week, another of his pals bit the dust, convicted by a Chicago jury of 16 counts of this and that. “This isn’t the Tony Rezko I knew,” said the senator, in what’s becoming a standard formulation. Likewise, this wasn’t the Jeremiah Wright he knew. And these are guys he’s known for 20 years. Yet at the same time as he’s being stunned by the corruption and anti-Americanism of those closest to him, Obama’s convinced that just by jetting into Tehran and Pyongyang he can get to know America’s enemies and persuade them to hew to the straight and narrow. No doubt if it all goes belly up and Iran winds up nuking Tel Aviv, President Obama will put on his more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger face and announce solemnly that “this isn’t the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad I knew.”

Maybe he's saving all his competence and judgment for 2009 and on.