Barack Obama names former Fannie Mae lobbyist as National Security Advisor

  Last week Barack Obama named Tom Donilon to the post of National Security Advisor. This is interesting because it turns out that Tom Donilon is a former lobbyist for both Fannie Mae and Goldman Sachs–both culprits in the mortgage meltdown that led to the current financial crisis.

  This appointment is also interesting on another level because part of Barack Obama’s campaign promise to end “business as usual” in Washington was his pledge to not hire one single lobbyist in his administration. He even signed an executive order banning lobbyists from his administration, however he has granted several waivers in the past to this executive order and has several lobbyists working for him in the White House.

 The ban on lobbyists was a major campaign promise and while this is not the first time he has violated that promise, this may be the most egregious violation of that pledge to date.

  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were two of the principle players in the mortgage meltdown but when the Congress passed the financial reform bill and the president signed it into law both of these entities were not included in the reforms. These government entities were given a pass while the Congress told us that while this was not a perfect bill, something had to be done and they could always revisit the issue at a later date. We all know that nothing is going to be done about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac because such major players in the scandal would have been dealt with first if the federal government had any inkling do do something with these organizations.

  Now to top it off we have a former lobbyist for Fannie Mae being rewarded with a high level cabinet position. With the president showing such disregard on a position that he supposedly felt so strongly about during the campaign is it any wonder that the Democrat base is not energized about the upcoming mid-term election? One has to begin to wonder what the hell is going on here? Why is this man Barack Obama’s choice for National Security Advisor? Was this part of some deal that was struck during the financial reform bill debates?

  As can be read in the article I linked to above Tom Donilon was a top consultant for Fannie Mae who fought against the restrictions that the Bush administration tried unsuccessfully to implement against both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and now he is a top advisor to Barack Obama. This simply does not pass the smell test.

  Barack Obama is a master of sleight of hand–he has no problem saying one thing while at the very same time doing the opposite. I can give you two quick examples of this off the top of my head: he railed against earmarks by calling for earmark reform while at the same time signing a bill which included 8,000 earmarks and during his State of the Union address he complained about the Congress’ perpetual campaigning and then hit the campaign trail for troubled Democrats.

  Barack Obama is a walking contradiction and even his base has to see the truth now. How can he continue to have the support of his base when he has broken so many of his campaign promises to them? While he is crossing the country trying to drum up support for struggling Democrats it is moves like this one that have the far left Democrats feeling disenfranchised in the first place.