Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

Saint Barack Plays the Game Too

I stand in never ending awe of Barack Obama’s ability to criticize John McCain for playing political games while pretending that Obama doesn’t play precisely the same sort of games. Case in point:

Barack Obama defended one of the men vetting his running-mate prospects Tuesday after the adviser came under fire for receiving favorable loan terms from a sub-prime lending company Obama has criticized.

The Illinois senator kept the adviser — former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson — at an arm’s length, but heartily rejected the suggestion that he should do background checks for unpaid members of a search committee, no matter how influential their task may be.

“I mean this is a game that can be played — everybody, you know, who is anybody who is tangentially related to our campaign I think is going to have a whole host of relationships,” he said in St. Louis, Mo. “I would have to hire the vetter to vet the vetters. I mean at some point, you know, we just asked people to do their assignments.”

Was it a game when the Dems went after McCain aide Craig Shirley for having ties to a 527? Or McCain aides Doug Davenport and Doug Goodyear for being associated with a firm that had done lobbying for Myanmar? Or Phil Gramm for working for UBS?

This is complete inside-the-beltway nonsense, which both sides play constantly. Yet, somehow Saint Barack has been able to pull off the impressive trick of pretending he doesn’t play the game and the media has given him a free ride.