Barack Obama’s liberal apologists in the blogosphere could not imagine that the James Johnson story would persist. But it has and now even the mainstream media has the full story of Johnson on page one. You might expect that the Wall Street Journal editors would call foul. But when that well-known right wing outlet the New York Times has a mind-numbing account of Johnson’s record of inside deals and sweetheart favors it is noteworthy.

What is more, the mainstream media is figuring out what many on the right have observed for some time: Obama is awful on his feet under questioning. MSNBC (yes, even MSNBC) comments:

Obama’s response on this issue yesterday was odd. “Well, look … first of all, I am not vetting my vice presidential search committee for their mortgages,” Obama answered. “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… These aren’t folks who are working for me. They are not people, you know, who I have assigned to a job in the future administration.” He basically said Johnson was a volunteer. While technically true, isn’t he volunteering for arguably the most important job on the campaign right now: helping select Obama’s vice president? Seriously, this may be the worst answer Obama has ever given in print. Overall, the campaign seemed surprisingly unprepared for the vetting of the vetter.

The danger here is that once the allure of an ever eloquent harbinger of New Politics gets smudged beyond recognition we are back to a standard fare ultra-liberal politician. And a very, very disappointed media cheering section.