You know, I’m reminded of an incident from 68 years ago that was repeatedly brought out in books on WWII, American history of the time, Roosevelt’s presidency, etc. In 1940, much of Europe was at war; the U.S. was neutral and large parts of the citizenry suspected their political opposition of trying to edge us into the European war. FDR, supporting the U.K. morally and economically, was repeatedly questioned by Republicans as to whether he was trying to send our boys off to die on foreign shores. He repeatedly promised the American public in speeches that we would not get into war – in the sense of American troops being sent to fight; even many isolationists saw the moral virtue in helping Britain and France against Hitler by sales of armaments and such – unless we were attacked. Given the recent history of the time, this was a reasonable caveat. Exactly once did he forget to attach that caveat, in a speech in Boston, and a certain nitpicky subset of Republicans attacked him for breaking that promise after Pearl Harbor. (To do the GOP credit, the larger part of the party which had opposed FDR but knew damn well that the Japanese attack changed things, and pointedly ignored, denounced, or distanced themselves froim the first subset.)
Rightly or wrongly, there was a widespread view that the Bush43 administration was in the pocket of, or in bed with, major corporations, particularly those in which its leaders had formerly been in top management positions. (And let us not hijack this thread with that debate – I’m stating, as what I believe is a perceived fact, that there was such a widespread view – if you want ot debate whether that view had validity, go somewhere else and do so.)
Now, Obama’s promise was, as I see it, at least partially in reaction to that. Haliburton and Exxon-Mobil would not dictate policy to an Obama Administration! Hence the point about corporate lobbyists in the Spartanburg speech. And of course when Obama’s actual policy statement is promulgated, it does allow for exceptions where it benefits the common good to allow this guy, with admitted expertise, to help in policy area X when he has been supporting himself as lobbyist for area Y. (My personal hunch is that former President Carter warned Mr. Obama of the dangers of New Broom Syndrome – having nobody on staff who knows “who did what with whom, and when and where and why” inside the Beltway.)
I’m not out to defend Mr. Obama’s choices in naming former corporate lobbyists to specific positions. I don’t know either the men or the jobs that well, if at all. What I see is that he stated a broadly expressed general principle, for good reason IMO, defined when and how he’d make specific exceptions to it (also a good idea; there are few broad-brush statements that do not admit of unjust impacts on a few specific situations, and allowing for exceptions to the broad brush in those situations is the mark of a realistic statesman.) – Now given all that, Bricker has nailed down what at first looked like a good-sized laundry list but got pared down to four specific exceptions. They may in fact not be good choices; I don’t know. What I do know is that Mr. Obama seems to be following his stated process – not a campaign-promise sound bite, but the specific, nuanced program that says, in effect, “No corporate lobbyists, avoid revolving-door employment, two years gap, allowing specific exceptions by waiver for specific needs.”
This hardly seems like the sort of thing to constitute a Great Debate. Indeed, while a fair question to be asked and answered, when finally sorted out it barely rises to the level of a Petty Nitpick.
