James A. Johnson And The Re-Emergence of the Perennial Double Standard

I've got fairly stringent standards in such matters, and I have no inclination to loosen them up when it comes to Obama. But, unless I'm missing something, this is fairly absurd. I'm not sure I even really understand what the charges against Johnson are, so that may be the problem. But we're not talking about the VP here, nor about any members of a potential administration. We're talking about the people who will make suggestions about potential VPs. It seems to me that it doesn't much matter who these people are, so long as they are likely to make good suggestions. Now, if there is significant reason to think that Johnson might make a bad suggestion, then that's a prudential problem for Obama. But I'm not sure I see a clear moral problem here.

Now, the crucial suppressed premise here may be that no candidate for president should ever associate with anyone who is a crook. And, if Johnson is a crook, then the unstated conclusion follows easily. No one ever meets the suggested standard, of course, so it is impossible to consistently advocate the standard, and, hence, to consistently criticize Obama here. But it's a standard I'm in favor of, so, if people would actually adopt it universally (instead of on an ad hoc basis to score political points) I'd be all for it.

This is a very tenuous criticism of Obama, and it seems fairly shocking to me that this is big, front-page news in the Post. Consider, for example, that news about the final judgment of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was not. Unless I'm really missing something, things have gone fairly far askew here.