Vetting the Vetters!

At a press conference in St. Louis, Obama defends his choice of Jim Johnson to lead his vetting team, calling reports into Johnson's ties to the mortgage company Countrywide "a game."

"Johnson has a very discrete task," he said, dismissing the notion that he'd "hire vetters to vet the vetters."

The fact that his staff made similar tactical attacks on Clinton, on very similar issues (actually, nobody on in Clinton's orbit was ever accused of getting a special deal from Countrywide) makes it harder for Obama to take cover on the high road here.

UPDATE: For instance, David Plouffe in March critized Clinton for taking contributions from Countrywide lobbyists.

'If we're really going to crack down on the practices that caused the credit and housing crises, we're going to need a leader who doesn't owe these industries any favors," he said.

Full transcript after the jump.

SEN. BARACK OBAMA: 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. I would have to hire the vetter to vet the vetters. I mean at some point, we just asked people to do their assignments. Jim Johnson has a very discrete task, as does Eric Holder, and that is simply to gather up information about potential vice presidential candidates. They’re performing that job well. It’s a volunteer, unpaid position. And they’re giving me information, and I will then exercise judgment in terms of who I want to select as a vice presidential candidate. So these aren’t folks who are working for me, they’re not people who I have assigned to a particular job in a future administration. And ultimately, my assumption is that this is a discrete task that they are going to be performing for me over the next two months.

Ben Smith