Too bad the American media hasn’t kept as close an eye on Barack Obama and his promises to clean up government as the Times of India has.  Noting that Obama has already issues 17 exceptions to his no-lobbyist rules in the first two weeks of his inauguration, they wonder how it could worse:

It is easy to project yourself as a clean politician after making your debut in South Side Chicago with buddies like Rahm Emanuel. US president Obama has appointed more than 17 lobbyists after talking big on anti-lobbyist Governance and rooting corruption out of the American Government.

Dreams are dreams. Facts are facts. President Obama is surrounded by corrupt lobbyists ready to sell America cheap. …

Take the example of the newest exposure of doubletalk from Obama! After calling for clean Governance, he appoints a Treasury Secretary who “forgot” to pay for his ‘business tax’ for years! Tom Daschle, a top lobbyist in Washington, who has amended his U.S. tax forms to pay back taxes with interest, is now Obama’s best choice for America’s chief health official. …

Would you believe, Obama had to issue 17 waivers on his own rule in less than two weeks for allowing lobbyist enter his Administration and control Governance of America!

Well, that’s Hope and Change^TM, isn’t it?  When anyone has to issue more than a waiver a day on any standard, it ceases being a standard and becomes a joke.  The no-lobbyist rule has become just that — an ironic joke on all of the saps who fell for Obama’s populist pap over the last two years.

Why do we have to go to the Times of India to hear how many exceptions to this rule Obama has invoked?  If the Bush administration had publicly imposed such a restriction on itself and then quietly ignored it, we’d hear endless editorials about Bush’s hypocrisy and the influence of the rich and powerful on his administration.  We heard exactly that when Dick Cheney assembled a group of advisors, without government positions or enforcement authority, to help him build an energy policy during the first term.  Some watchdog groups went to court to force Cheney to reveal their names so that they could make that exact point.

But Obama appointing lobbyist after lobbyist to government positions, with enforcement power, despite his promise not to do that at all?  Crickets chirp among the American media.  I guess they’ve outsourced their Truth-to-Power divisions to India.