Awww: Enviros oddly unhappy with Obama’s new senior political lobbyist adviser

Yesterday, I warned that Barack Obama’s new senior political adviser would not be popular with the Occupy Wall Street hard Left, thanks to Broderick Johnson’s connections to Wall Street.  Looks like they’ll have to wait in line to give their down twinkles.  Johnson’s lobbying clients included the Keystone XL pipeline, a project that the environmental Left wants desperately to block:

Environmentalists are unhappy with President Barack Obama’s presidential campaign for hiring a former lobbyist for the Keystone XL pipeline as a senior adviser.

Broderick Johnson, a Washington lawyer and lobbyist, is joining the campaign as a senior adviser and member of the senior staff.

Johnson registered as a lobbyist promoting TransCanada’s proposed Alberta-to-Texas pipeline in the fourth quarter of 2010, when he worked for Bryan Cave LLP. TransCanada paid $120,000 to Bryan Cave during those three months, according to lobbying disclosure records.

Bill McKibben, who is leading protests against the pipeline, said the hiring is another sign of “disrespect” from the Obama administration.

“It stinks,” McKibben said in a statement. “I don’t think you could conceive a more elaborate way to disrespect not just the environmental community but also Occupy Wall Street, because this is simply a reminder of the way that corporate lobbyists dominate our politics. Forget ‘Hope and Change’ — it’s like they want their new slogan to be ‘Business as Usual.’”

Well, Obama did warn people this week that the 2012 campaign would “not be as sexy as the first one.”  An incumbent by definition represents “business as usual,” only in this case, business has been … pretty bad, especially in terms of economic policy.  That’s one reason why Obama had to bring Johnson onto the team in the first place — in order to convince the investment community to toss more money into his campaign coffers.

In other words, the enviros can rest easy on one point.  Johnson’s there to build a pipeline all right, but not from Alberta’s oil sands to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico.  He’s there to build one from Wall Street to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

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