Yet Another President Odubya Moment

Two in one day, even.  This one via Digby:

They made a campaign ad called "Billy" against lobbyist power and then they immediately invited "Billy" to practically move into the White House? What in the hell were they thinking?

The Billy in question is Big Pharma lobbyist king Billy Tauzin.


The ad in question is here:

And the problem in question is this:

White House visitor logs dumped late in the week between Christmas and New Year's Eve show that Billy Tauzin, the top lobbyist for the prescription drug industry and once a favorite target of Barack Obama, visited the White House at least 11 times in Obama's first six months in office.

As Digby says, Obama is in real trouble on this one.

Aside from the policy implications, which we already had to swallow, the political problem the Democrats have bought for themselves with this are huge. It would be different if Obama hadn't explicitly run on a clean government platform and if the Republicans weren't blatantly hypocritical opportunists. But he did and they are and this is powerful mojo that plays into the hands of the tea partiers and Republicans.

I can't get over the administration's sheer political malpractice in handling this populist mood in the country. I don't know if they all convinced themselves that they were political magicians and therefore the rules don't apply to them or what, but Democrats should have known that after having turned the phrase "culture of corruption" into their mantra, they would be particularly vulnerable to appearances of impropriety (not to mention actual impropriety.) Bad, bad move.

And she's dead right.  Odubya cut a deal with Tauzin right off the bat.  Then he hoped nobody would notice.  I give the Washington Examiner a lot of crap, but they did their job this time.  Obama really looks like an asshole on this one.