Commentary: Ethics Reform Under Scrutiny

Campus Report ^ | October 16, 2009 | Brittany Fortier

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Commentary: Ethics Reform Under Scrutiny

Brittany Fortier, October 16, 2009

During his campaign last year, President Obama said that he was “running to tell the lobbyists in Washington that their days of setting the agenda are over.” With numerous questionable Cabinet appointees, 32 czars (and counting) who do not have to answer to Congress, and scandals involving organizations affiliated with the President (e.g., Acorn), how effective has Obama been at keeping his promise?

Norm Eisen, Special Counsel for Ethics and Government Reform at the White House, spoke about President Obama’s sweeping ethics reform plan at the Center for American Progress (CAP) on September 14, 2009. It seems that supporters of the President’s preemptive war on lobbyists are already deeming the program to be a (to coin a well-known phrase) “mission accomplished.”

Eisen acknowledged that folks at CAP “don’t always agree” with him concerning ethics reform issues, but he nevertheless insisted that the “backbone of the stimulus lobbying program is disclosure.” He further reminded attendees that the White House’s official blog and other agency sites have been reporting lobbying contacts under the purported “interest of transparency.”

Gushing over President Obama’s “strong and profound idealism” as well as an “equally strong practicality” concerning the ethics reform agenda, Eisen referred to the Obama administration’s regulations the “toughest in the history of American government.”

Eisen added that it is “not an accident that the first months, first eight months, of our administration have not been characterized by some of the public and distracting scandals that earlier administrations have sometimes had to confront…”

For those of you who may be wondering, yes, Eisen actually said that with a straight face.

It turns out that not all attendees at the CAP event were feeling the love....

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Obama? Ethics? Is this a joke?

I’m serious - is this a joke?

In Obamaland “ethics” are for the little people - not rich, important libs.