Obama: Lobbyists Won’t Find a Job in My White House . . . But They Certainly Are Welcome to Work on My Transition!
Barack Obama, November 3, 2007:
One year from now, we have the chance to tell all those corporate lobbyists that the days of them setting the agenda in Washington are over. I have done more to take on lobbyists than any other candidate in this race – and I’ve won. I don’t take a dime of their money, and when I am President, they won’t find a job in my White House.
To burnish Obama’s reformist credentials, Podesta on Tuesday rolled out what he billed as a tough set of ethics rules targeting professional lobbyists. But there was a loophole: Lobbyists could work on the transition as long as they stayed away from the policy areas that their lobbying involved.
So, will these folks be working on the transition from outside the White House? Just curious.
This is reported under the headline: “Despite campaign promise, Obama turns to lobbyists.” Ha ha! Just kidding! The actual headline is: “Barack Obama is looking more like a realist.”
The line about lobbyists I quote above is in the article, prominently featured in the very last line.
P.S. There won’t be any FEC audit of Obama, by the way. But there will be one of McCain.
Mmmm, the change. I can smell it.
UPDATE: More change we can believe in documented here.
Hhhm. But I guess this is all further proof that he’s a “good man.”
Kelly (9e52ed) — 11/12/2008 @ 5:51 amIt’s long about now, Patterico, that we all need to remember those lyrics from “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” by The Who:
I used to listen to that song, and say to myself, “What cynics! Don’t they believe in anything?”
I’m guessing they were wiser than I thought!
Hey, it’s just Chicago politics! Hope and Change indeed.
Oh, and as Ace puts it: nuance!
Eric Blair (a723e0) — 11/12/2008 @ 5:52 amThe FEC is going to audit McCain, but not Baracky? This would be sad, were it not true.
JD (94c827) — 11/12/2008 @ 5:56 amChange, it is what’s for breakfast.
Also, one nit to pick. It is no longer the Transition Team. It is now The Office of the President-Elect. Or, Arrogant Insufferable … you get the point.
JD (94c827) — 11/12/2008 @ 5:59 amHhhm. But I guess this is all further proof that he’s a “good man.”
That’ll never get old, Kelly! And luckily, I always said that Obama never lies and that he would be super-ethical in every way, so that’s a real ZINGER you got there!
Patterico (cc3b34) — 11/12/2008 @ 6:00 amAs before, I’m going to invite anyone who wants to revisit the “good man” debate to take it to the appropriate comment thread, like here or here or here. The rest of us are sick of it.
Patterico (cc3b34) — 11/12/2008 @ 6:05 amNotice how the Politico article notes that the FEC is currently comprised of 3 Dems and 3 Reps, but fails to note that the Dems have blocked the nomination for the 7th seat for years? Convenient, that.
JD (94c827) — 11/12/2008 @ 6:12 amHappily for her, my wife doesn’t remember anything she said about me in transition, any of the three times.
Dan Collins (4dc2da) — 11/12/2008 @ 6:18 amAfter they work on the transition team, they’ll be able to work in “his” White House. After all, they won’t be lobbyists anymore, they’ll be transition team workers. Only their most recent job title will be used to describe them.
Sean (a65648) — 11/12/2008 @ 6:18 amThe FEC has to do an audit I think. Not sure they have an option.
Baracky might not have it done b/c he opted out.
What they should do is a database run on the Credit Cards Baracky used to raise 4:1 over McCain.
I am sure if you did a few databases calcs you would find massive fraud with duplicate card numbers rolling up huge charges under false names.
Robert Rodriguez (54247e) — 11/12/2008 @ 6:18 amRobert, they would do that, if they cared about fair elections. Which they evidently don’t.
Dan Collins (4dc2da) — 11/12/2008 @ 6:20 amI wish “they” would just tell the truth. That Washington cannot function without lobbyists. There are a handful of Congresscritters who keep themselves informed of the needs of our country and of their constituents (Senator Byrd for one), and of course the President has an army of information gatherers and councils, but the vast majority of our lawmakers depend on lobbyists to tell them what’s going on.
nk (87c95e) — 11/12/2008 @ 6:34 am“Conflict of interest” is sooooooo passe!
Mossberg500 (9fd170) — 11/12/2008 @ 7:02 amThere is a difference between Obama the Democratic candidate seeking nomination, and Obama, the Democrats presidential candidate, and Obama the President elect and Obama the President. It’s called metamorphosis. Stayed tuned folks. Barack Obama: Change we can expect. 😉
love2008 (0c8c2c) — 11/12/2008 @ 7:22 amDan,
Seems like they don’t care. I agree.
Power over principles.
Robert Rodriguez (54247e) — 11/12/2008 @ 7:25 amI see no metamorphing going on. I saw him as a disingenuous far Left partisan from the get-go, and every step of the way, he has proven to be so.
JD (94c827) — 11/12/2008 @ 7:29 amYeah, love, I’m sure he’s a regular Henry V.
Dan Collins (4dc2da) — 11/12/2008 @ 7:30 amTalking about a “new type of politics” is as old as politics itself. 52% just bought Sham-Wow.
Mossberg500 (9fd170) — 11/12/2008 @ 7:36 amChange,
Its all I’m going to have left…
EricPWJohnson (3906c5) — 11/12/2008 @ 7:37 amMossberg500 – A Sham-Wow will not surrender a war you are winning nor will it raise your taxes.
JD (94c827) — 11/12/2008 @ 7:38 amI’ll have to review the 1001 uses list to see if makeshift flag , and soaking up COLA, made it.
Mossberg500 (9fd170) — 11/12/2008 @ 7:48 amObama promised us Change. Has that changed?
love2008 (0c8c2c) — 11/12/2008 @ 8:13 amYou’ll notice the restriction on lobbyists on the transition team:
Another Drew (080b14) — 11/12/2008 @ 8:27 amThey will not be allowed to lobby the administration for one-year.
Doesn’t say anything about lobbying Congress, where the real money is!
If you consider lying “change”, yes! Congratulations on picking up on the nuance
Mossberg500 (9fd170) — 11/12/2008 @ 8:27 amAnother Drew-
It’s even more refined than that. “If someone becomes a lobbyist after working on the Transition, they are prohibited from lobbying the Administration for 12 months on matters on which they worked.”
Now, who decides how close a match it is between what they want to lobby for and what they worked on, I don’t know.
It was stupid to try to turn lobbyists into boogymen anyway. They are like Lawyers- the advocate for the people that pay them.
Obama should be more concerned that the people in his White House can resist the pitch that lobbyists give them.
MayBee (e66885) — 11/12/2008 @ 8:44 amComment by MayBee — 11/12/2008 @ 8:44 am
“…the people in his White House can resist the pitch that lobbyists…”
Only if they fall outside of the parameters shown by P.J.O’Rourke in Parliment of Whores.
Another Drew (080b14) — 11/12/2008 @ 9:03 amAs before, I’m going to invite anyone who wants to revisit the “good man” debate to take it to the appropriate comment thread, like here or here or here. The rest of us are sick of it.
Comment by Patterico — 11/12/2008 @ 6:05 am
Patterico apparently has yet to realize that his “(Obama’s a) good man” statement will not ‘go away’ until he retracts it.
clark smith (d8da01) — 11/12/2008 @ 10:10 amPatterico – I love ya, baby! You do yeoman’s work with the LA Times. That doesn’t mean I’ll always agree with you, and besides, I’m going to have to find humor where I can over the next 4 to 8 years! 😉
Kelly (9e52ed) — 11/12/2008 @ 11:15 amBaracky was for lobbyists before he was against lobbyists before he was for them, and will be kind of against them again after his Ascension has been completed. Axelrod’s firm did lobbying, so they were not that evil to Baracky.
JD (94c827) — 11/12/2008 @ 11:20 amThat’s right. It’s time for a fairness doctrine for lobbyists . . .
. . . or maybe he’s gonna weed out the bad ones and only keep the good ones.
Or something.
Icy Truth (aedb2f) — 11/12/2008 @ 11:23 am“Looking more like a realist” sounds about right, given all those hard-hitting pre-election pieces they ran deriding Obama for being unrealistic. Oh, wait…
Xrlq (931f72) — 11/12/2008 @ 1:53 pm“Barack Obama is looking more like a realist.”
Get used to that headline. Of course every liberal called me a racist when I called his ideas naive. But I’m guessing that he’s going to continue to become more and more real.
xerocky (2897b3) — 11/12/2008 @ 1:58 pmObama a decent man?
Patterico you make me sick!
How can a basically decent guy be responsible for genocide?
What the Hell am I taking about?
Are we going to just forget about how he campaigned for Odinga in 2006 and had the foreign policy aide in his U.S. Senate office (Mark Lippert) act as intermediary during Odinga’s 2007 campaign.
The campaign plan that Odinga laid out was developed in cooperation with Obama.
Part of that campaign plan was to incite racial violence after Odinga lost. Such violence was responsible for nearly 1000 deaths.
Did Obama encourage Odinga regarding this part of the strategy At the very least we know he didn’t condemn him or try to stop him from that path even though he had such a close connection to the campaign.
Decent Man? To say so makes you a RACIST as you are saying that the deaths of these people since they were “just” black people in Africa doesn’t really matter.
Steve (c3463f) — 11/12/2008 @ 2:51 pmNot correct…I’ll never get sick of it. But I do still think you’re the cat’s meow, so forgive me.
Old Coot (8a493c) — 11/12/2008 @ 2:53 pmComment by Steve — 11/12/2008 @ 2:51 pm
Haven’t gotten to the bottom of that pot yet, I see.
Another Drew (080b14) — 11/12/2008 @ 2:55 pmObama the realist is also another way to say Obama the waffler. He has already started editing his campaign promises to fit his leftist illuminati platform. Now that he doesn’t have to sell himself to the voters, he can start doing things the way he always planned to.
Jeff (3cb047) — 11/13/2008 @ 8:48 amI know this is slightly off topic but this is kind of my point as we haven’t addressed this topic in conservative circles.
We have already seen some, albeit just some, “buyers remorse” in the part of some of his supporters
http://www.sajaforum.org/2008/11/obama-sonal-shah-on-transition-team.html
Check out the above link. While some are defending Sonal Shah, there are Indians and especially Muslims quite upset about Sonal Shah being part of Obama’s transition team.
I just wish that the conservative bloggers out there would report on this controversy because it could be signs of things to come with the Left’s disappointment with “the One”. This whole thing could fall apart quicker than anyone realizes.
Sid (5b19ff) — 11/13/2008 @ 11:34 am