More than a month ago, I wrote a three-pronged post that 1) praised President Obama for enacting a ban on lobbyists serving in the administration 2) criticized President Obama for issuing wavers to corporate lobbyists to allow them to serve in the administration and 3) suggested that the Obama administration amend its lobbyist ban to allow lobbyists from non-profits to serve in the administration, since the real problem of lobbyist abuse is about for-profit corporate lobbyists exerting too much power over the government.
This week, the New York Times offers up a piece highlighting the last part of the argument, and specifically, criticism from non-profit organizations that the Obama administration is unfairly shutting their lobbyists out of government jobs. Here's the Obama administration's intelligence-insulting response:
"It's painful," Mr. Axelrod said. "There are a lot of good people out there who are philosophically simpatico with us and are very skilled and would be very valuable to us."
But, he said, "you can't have carve-outs for lobbyists you like and exclude those that you don't. It would be very hard for people to understand that distinction. This is one of those cases where we've had to sacrifice the help of a lot of very valuable people."
It seems like Axelrod is expressing genuine "pain" - but it's bullshit and, as I said, intelligence-insulting. Why? Because while the administration says "you can't have carve-outs for lobbyists you like," the White House has already created those very carve-outs - specifically, for corporate lobbyists it likes.
The fact is, you can't have it both ways - you can't simultaneously claim we can't have "carve outs" and then say yes, we can have carve outs.
White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel insists in the Times story that it's not fair to differentiate between corporate lobbyists like Jack Abramoff and non-profit lobbyists for organizations like Human Rights Watch - he claims "you can't have a value judgment." But that's exactly what the Obama administration is doing when it puts corporate lobbyists in positions regulating the corporations they once lobbied for: it is making a value judgement.
That value judgement, of course, is what is really disturbing, even beyond the hypocrisy. To put it into Axelrod's words, the administration is saying Goldman Sachs and Raytheon lobbyists are "philosophically simpatico with us" and therefore the best people to put in top positions. And then, somehow, we're all supposed to be shocked that the banking industry is getting more bailout money and the defense budget is increasing.
I said it before and I'll say it again: It's great that Obama has tried to create some modicum of anti-K Street sentiment in the White House, but it's terrible that the administration nonetheless bends the rules to help the corporate lobbyists it likes. And moving forward, I'm still hoping the administration does a little bit of differentiation.
Most regular folks outside of Washington understand the difference between Jack Abramoff and a lobbyist for a non-profit human rights organization. The idea that it would be controversial to differentiate those two kinds of people is an absurd notion, only serious in the totally corrupt world of Washington, D.C. I'm guessing Obama aides understand the differentiation (they're not stupid, after all), but they just don't want to make it.
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