Obama On Johnson Flap And Town Hall Challenge

ST. LOUIS, MO – Barack Obama downplayed questions today regarding vice presidential search committee member Jim Johnson, who received favorable loans from beleaguered mortgage lender Countrywide Financial, saying Johnson is an unpaid volunteer performing a discreet task and that he should not have to vet his vetters.

Obama also responded to a question about Eric Holder, another member of his VP search team who was involved in President Bill Clinton's controversial decision to pardon financier Marc Rich.

"This is a game that can be played," Obama said during a press conference. "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, you know, 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 are giving me information, and then I will then exercise judgment in terms of who I want to select as a vice presidential candidate."

Obama noted he has not promised jobs to Johnson and Holder in a future administration and that their responsibilities in vetting potential veep candidates would take two months.

The Democratic nominee said his team is in discussions with John McCain's campaign regarding possible joint town halls and debates. McCain has challenged Obama to 10 town hall meetings.

"What we've said is we are happy to do more than the three typical presidential debates in the fall," Obama said. "If I'm not mistaken we've gone back with a counterproposal to them and are in communication with them right now and our hope is is that we will have those negotiations completed soon," he said.

Ten meetings, however, seems unlikely, Obama said, "given all the campaigning that has, that I have to do since we just finished our primary election."

The senator guessed the two candidates would meet less than 10 times but more than three and would probably do so in a "mix of formats."

Obama reflected on his winning the Democratic Party's nomination, something he said last week that he would spend the weekend doing.

"I am extraordinarily proud of what my team did, and I think am most of all humbled and grateful to the American people for giving me this opporunity," he said. "Humbled because we've got a big job ahead of us, and it makes me want to redouble my efforts in delivering on the promises that have been made so far in the campaign."

Obama also spent some time talking about the economy, saying he believes taxes should be as low as possible while still allowing for investment in "the basic infrastructure and human capital that are needed to make the economy grow," and he said that his talks with people like Warren Buffet have led him to believe the capital gains tax rate could be raised to 20% without any significant impact in business investment.

He made a point of complimenting former President Bill Clinton twice, once regarding his cops program that helped reduce crime rates in the 1990s and then for his stewardship of the economy. He that there had been no specific discussions with Hillary Clinton regarding her debt, although he noted their talk had been "very constructive."

"I was extraordinarily grateful to her for the strong endorsement that she provided on Saturday," Obama said. "Our teams are now working together to figure out how we move forward on a whole variety of fronts. We have not had detailed discussions about her debt, and, you know, I think that what she's really interested in, as she said on Saturday, is figuring out how are we going to move forward to make sure we win the White House."

Obama spent about an hour and a half touring Barnes Jewish hospital's cardiothoracic unit with a nurse. (This was the same hospital Rudy Giuliani checked into in the fall after falling ill on the campaign trail.) When it came to his own health, Obama said he would release more medical records if there were specific questions people had and said guessed that it had been "months" since he had last smoked a cigarette.

Obama began with a response to McCain's attacks earlier today on the economy, arguing the Arizona senator had distorted his proposals.

Obama: "The way that he's characterizing what I'm prescribing is just wrong. So let me be clear. My tax reform plan would cut taxes for 95% of workers. I'll repeat that. My tax plan will cut taxes for 95% of workers, because we need to put money back into the pockets of struggling middle class families and close the egregious tax loopholes that have exploded over the last 8 years. My plan eliminates capital gains taxes entirely for the small businesses and startups that are the backbone of our economy as opposed to John McCain's plan, which would tax these businesses. Now I've said that John McCain is running to serve out a third Bush term, but the truth is when it comes to taxes, that's not being fair to George Bush. Sen. McCain wants to add $300 billion more in tax breaks and loopholes for big corporations and the wealthiest Americans and he hasn't even explained how to pay for it. He hasn't come remotely close to figuring out how he would pay for it. In fact even the Wall Street Journal has pointed out that his proposal to eliminate earmarks won't come close to covering the cost of all the corporate tax cuts that he is proposing."

He said McCain does not have a plan for fixing Social Security, apart from privatizing it, and does not have a comprehensive plan to lower healthcare costs.

(NBC/NJ's ATHENA JONES)