Less than two weeks after his election, Barack Obama is already changing his stance on lobbyists.
President-elect Barack Obama, who vowed during his campaign that lobbyists "won't find a job in my White House," said through a spokesman yesterday that he would allow lobbyists on his transition team as long as they work on issues unrelated to their earlier jobs.
Obama's transition chief laid out ethics rules - which also bar transition staff from lobbying the administration for one year if they become lobbyists later - and portrayed them as the strictest ever for a transfer of presidential power.
But independent analysts said yesterday that the move is less than the wholesale removal of lobbyists that he suggested during the campaign - and shows how difficult it will be to lessen the pervasive influence of more than 40,000 registered lobbyists.
Prepare for Obama to break many more of his promises.
He talked a good game, but he's not delivering.
From the New York Times:
President-elect Barack Obama on Saturday named Ronald A. Klain, a former lobbyist and Clinton White House lawyer, as chief of staff to Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.
His selection is one of several early appointments to Mr. Obama’s White House and transition staff that calls attention to the limits of Mr. Obama’s sweeping self-imposed ethics rules, laid out to fulfill a campaign pledge to “wrest the federal government out of the hands of lobbyists.”
Mr. Klain, who was chief of staff to former Vice President Al Gore, is an executive at Revolution, the investment company of the AOL founder Steve Case. He worked until 2005 as a lobbyist at the law firm of O’Melveny & Myers, where he lobbied for clients including the failed mortgage giant Fannie Mae; an industry group seeking help with asbestos lawsuits; a drug maker under federal investigation; the cable and media giant Time Warner; and an airline.
Mr. Obama’s ethics rules, however, do not bar former lobbyists. The rules prohibit officials like Mr. Klain from working on any matter directly related to their employers over the previous two years, so Mr. Klain would be required to recuse himself from issues involving Mr. Case’s firm Revolution.
Obama really is a transformational figure.
He's transforming the rules he set for his administration. He's making it up as he goes along.
Obama is reneging on the promise he made to the American people regarding lobbyists, but the lib media are fine with that.
You don't mess with Camelot.
3 comments:
Not to agree or disagree with your general point but Klain's background is not really as a lobbyist. He's not really a good example to use to prove your point. Klain's been doing work for an entrepreneur for the last number of years (Case). He understands business, which is good. But he was Al Gore's chief of staff, so that's really the business he's in: he's an expert at being a chief of staff, whether for Case or for Gore. He's a really good guy.
It's easy to follow the rules when you change the rules at will.
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