Interesting article today. More than 40 former lobbyists work in senior positions in the Obama administration, including three Cabinet secretaries and the CIA director. Yet in his State of the Union address, Obama claimed, “We’ve excluded lobbyists from policymaking jobs.”
You can see a list of the hires and who they lobbied for by clicking on this link.
The reporter asked the White House if he chose his words poorly, but the media affairs office defended the president’s statement: “As the President said,” a spokeswoman wrote in an e-mail, “we have turned away lobbyists for many, many positions.”
So, the country may have heard, “we haven’t hired lobbyists to policymaking jobs,” but the White House tells us Obama meant, “we only hired some of the lobbyists who applied for policymaking jobs.” In other words, they’ve excluded some lobbyists.
Almost as good as Bill Clinton’s famous “I did not have sex with that woman” defense.
This President certainly gives good speech, as we saw last week. I wish he also gave good policy.
JR
The reality is big business runs the so called democratic process in the USA.
This is not what the founding fathers really had in mind when they designed the constitution!!!
Different times I guess!!!