Anyone remember how, during the late unlamented presidential campaign, Barack Obama kept yammering about the malign influence of Washington lobbyists? Well, evidently he doesn’t.
Today, the President-elect offically announced that his choice for HHS secretary and “director of the White House office of health reform” is a guy whose wife is a health care lobbyist:
His wife, Linda Daschle, is a registered lobbyist for a firm that includes health care clients.
But hey, not to worry:
Daschle told CNN that Linda Daschle would be leaving the firm at the end of the year … in order to clear any potential conflicts of interest.
Why do I have the feeling that, had John McCain won the election and made a similar appointment, the “news” media would now be ululating loudly about the “culture of corruption”?
And speaking of corruption, a significant part of the Obama press conference was devoted to ths subject of Illinois politics. One reporter asked “What’s wrong with politics in Illinois?”
Obama replied with a generalization about the presence of “wheeler-dealers mixed in with good public servants.” Here’s a pic, courtesy of Ed Morrissey, showing Obama with crooked Illinois Gov. Blagojevich:
This photo begs an obvious question: Is Obama one of the “wheeler dealers” or one of the “good public servants”? As I have pointed out before, past evidence suggests that he is an example of the former.
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