by Mark Silva
John McCain's supporters heard a frontal assault on the Republican candidate for president in Barack Obama's appearance in North Carolina today, and McCain is returning fire in an interview this afternoon with FOX News.
McCain takes aim at Jim Johnson, the seasoned Washington hand whom Obama has tapped for his running mate search, a former CEO of Fannie Mae who has benefited from a loan from the CEO of Countrywide Financial Corp. The Obama camp replies by singling out one of McCain's advisers, linked to the sub-prime crisis.
"I think it suggests a bit of a contradiction talking about how his campaign is going to be not associated with people like that,'' McCain says in an interview with FOX News' Carl Cameron that will be aired at 5 pm EDT. "Clearly he is very much associated with that.''
The CEO of Countrywide approved loans for politically connected buyers, the Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend- including Johnson, a former CEO of Fannie Mae in the 1990s serving now on Barack Obama's vice-presidential candidate recruiting team. The Journal reported that Countrywide's Angelo Mozilo approved the loans at preferential terms for a group known as "Friends of Angelo.''
Fannie Mae, the government-sponsored mortgage-backing agency, also has been rocked by accounting scandals well after Johnson's departure in 1998. But, the Journal reported, Johnson also had worked with Mozilo to streamline the credit approval process, which led to a boom in mortgage lending that led to the current foreclosure crisis.
An attorney for Johnson has told the newspaper that the terms of his personal home loan from Countrywide were well within industry limits.
"It's the height of hypocrisy for the McCain campaign to try and make this an issue when John Green, one of John McCain's top advisors, lobbied for Ameriquest, which was one of the nation's largest subprime lenders and a key player in the mortgage crisis,'' Tommy Vietor, an Obama campaign spokesman, said today
"As president, Sen. Obama will crack down on fraudulent lenders and bring real relief to Americans struggling in the grip of the housing crisis--the kind of change that works for the American people."
In his appearance in North Carolina today, Obama laid out an economic platform including tax cuts for the middle class and elderly and accused McCain of supporting "a full throated endorsement of George Bush's approaches.''
Sen. Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican, rose to the response for the McCain campaign, in a conference call with reporters.
"This is clearly an election cycle where, if Americans focus on the issues, they are going to find great differences,'' Burr said. "If they focus on the rhetoric... they are going to find inconsistencies.
"Having really just become the presumptive nominee, really 50 percent of Sen. Obama's speech was targeted as discrediting Sen. McCain,'' Burr suggested. ""I think the speech we heard to day is what the American people are sick and tired of, blaming someone else.''
While McCain may have a long record, Burr said, Obama's relatively short record is replete with votes for spending that require tax increases.
"Raising taxes on the part of Sen. Obama is a pretty certain thing,'' Burr said. "Sen. McCain has pretty bold in his pledge to keep taxes low.''
Posted by Mark Silva on June 9, 2008 4:45 PM