Citing a July 2 Washington Post article that has been criticized as unfair and misleading , the Politico 's Ken Vogel baselessly characterized Sen. Barack Obama's mortgage with Northern Trust in Illinois as a "sweetheart mortgage." In a discussion on the July 11 edition of MSNBC's Hardball about the chances that Obama would select Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) as a running mate, guest host Mike Barnicle said that Dodd "had the little mortgage flap a couple of weeks ago." Vogel said: "[L]et's not forget that Obama, too, was the subject of a story in The Washington Post , actually, suggesting that he got a good deal on his mortgage. So unless they want an all-sweetheart-mortgage ticket, I think this is probably not the way to go." But as Media Matters for America and numerous others noted, the Washington Post article provided no evidence that Obama had received preferential treatment from Northern Trust. Indeed, Vogel's own Politico colleagues Ben Smith and Mike Allen wrote that the Post 's story was "padded" and that "there's no evidence that they [the Obamas] dealt with the bank through a special side door for powerful people like the one Countrywide maintained." While the Post reported that the interest rate the Obamas received was "below the average for such loans at the time in Chicago," the article also quoted a vice president of Northern Trust saying that "the rates offered to Obama were 'consistent with internal Northern Trust rat ...
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