Last November, President-elect Obama declared he wouldn’t appoint lobbyists to his administration, because he sought to curtail the influence of “special interests” and “stop the revolving door” between big business and political power.  His advisers ballyhooed the lobbyist ban as part of “the strictest, and most far reaching ethics rules of any transition team in history.”

Nine months later, we all know that Obama has been willing to compromise on his ethics rule.  But I haven’t seen much commentary on how the lobbyist ban falls well short of its stated goals.  After all, lobbyists are only middlemen between special interests and political power. If Obama really wanted to “stop the revolving door” and curb the influence of “special interests” in the White House, he’d ban the people lobbyists represent, namely all candidates from big business (i.e. “special interests”).  That would be difficult, of course, but if Obama isn’t willing to go that far, then his lobbyist rule is really an empty gesture.

As a second best, one would at least hope that Obama would appoint candidates from the corporate world whose experience and track record suited them for their posts.  But even on that score, he has disappointed.  For the latest example, consider Obama’s pick to lead health reform:

Nancy-Ann DeParle, President Barack Obama’s health policy czar, served as a director of corporations that faced scores of federal investigations, whistleblower lawsuits and other regulatory actions, according to government records reviewed by the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University.

Several of the companies were investigated for alleged kickbacks or engaging in other illegal billing schemes, while others were accused of serious violations of federal quality standards, including one company that failed to warn patients of deadly problems with an implanted heart defibrillator. Several of the cases ended with substantial fines paid to the federal government, even though the companies admitted no wrongdoing.

In touting DeParle’s accomplishments when he appointed her in March, Obama didn’t mention the lucrative private-sector career she built since September 2000, when she left her government job running Medicare for the Clinton administration. Records show she earned more than $6.6 million since early 2001, according to a tally by the Investigative Reporting Workshop.

Or consider his nominee to run the environmental division of the Justice Department:

The Obama administration’s nomination of Ignacia Moreno to head the environment division of the Department of Justice is moving quietly through the confirmation process, with hearings expected to begin in the next few weeks. Moreno has worked for the environment division before, during the Clinton administration. But her most recent job — as environmental counsel for General Electric — has raised eyebrows among Environmental Protection Agency attorneys. Before Moreno worked for GE, she spent five years defending other companies in pollution-related lawsuits.

Six EPA attorneys interviewed by ProPublica criticized the nomination, but asked that their names not be used in this story because they fear retribution. They said they doubt that anyone who has recently defended GE would be effective in the role.

For decades, the EPA has clashed with GE over the many toxic waste sites the company has been linked to through the Superfund program. For the past two years, Moreno has defended GE in some of these cases. Now, if her nomination is confirmed, she will be one of the government’s top enforcement lawyers for the Superfund program and other environmental laws.

If DeParle and Moreno are ethically suitable candidates, what exactly is the problem with lobbyists?

Freedom of choice can be a dangerous thing.  That’s why our splendid republic tends to restrict our options to equally anodyne alternatives: Coke or Pepsi? Kris or Adam?  Democrats or Republicans?

Last Thursday, we were treated to another empty selection: Obama or Cheney?  The media portrayed their near-simultaneous speeches on national security as the ultimate showdown between two diametrically opposed views. Time Magazine played up their Beltway duel—Obama at the National Archives and Cheney at the American Enterprise Institute—as a heavyweight prize fight.  (And by the way, is there a moronic Beltway meme that Mark Halperin won’t parrot?)

Jack Goldsmith, former deputy AG in the Bush administration, has thankfully explained how Obama and Cheney fundamentally agree about most of the core issues:

Former Vice President Cheney says that President Obama’s reversal of Bush-era terrorism policies endangers American security. The Obama administration, he charges, has “moved to take down a lot of those policies we put in place that kept the nation safe for nearly eight years from a follow-on terrorist attack like 9/11.” Many people think Cheney is scare-mongering and owes President Obama his support or at least his silence. But there is a different problem with Cheney’s criticisms: his premise that the Obama administration has reversed Bush-era policies is largely wrong. The truth is closer to the opposite: The new administration has copied most of the Bush program, has expanded some of it, and has narrowed only a bit. Almost all of the Obama changes have been at the level of packaging, argumentation, symbol, and rhetoric.

On the issue of habeus corpus rights, to take one example, Goldsmith writes:

During the campaign former professor Obama spoke eloquently about the importance of habeas corpus review of executive detentions of enemy soldiers. Habeas corpus is “the foundation of Anglo-American law” and “the essence of who we are,” he said. But his administration has applied this principle in the same narrow fashion as the late Bush administration. It has argued that Guantanamo detainees can challenge the “fact, duration, or location” of confinement on habeas review, but not their “conditions of confinement.” It has maintained that “the Geneva Conventions are not judicially enforceable by private individuals” in habeas proceedings. And it has made clear its belief that the limited habeas rights it recognizes for the two hundred or so detainees on Guantanamo Bay do not extend to the 600 or so detainees in Bagram Air Base. This latter position might prove more controversial for President Obama than for President Bush. The new president’s enlarged military commitment in Afghanistan and Pakistan, combined with the forthcoming closure of Guantanamo, means that the number of suspects detained in Bagram–without charge or trial and without access to lawyers or habeas rights–is likely to increase, perhaps dramatically.

Go ahead and read the rest.

No matter what your politics or your views on national security, I hope you agree that the relevant issues deserve a serious discussion between genuinely opposed sides.  The Obama-Cheney “debate” is just another faux choice served up by our faux democracy.