President Obama’s White House press office is slated to bring in Jennifer Palmieri, a former registered lobbyist who now runs the lobbying operation at the Center for American Progress, and who served as communications director in 2004 for both John Edwards and Sen. John Kerry’s, D-Mass., presidential campaigns.
Palmieri will “have instant credibility within the tight-knit West Wing with responsibilities that will expand well beyond her title,” according to Politico, which reported the hire.
She enjoys that credibility despite President Obama’s supposed presumption that that lobbyists in government make Americans distrust government. “[Americans] deserve a government that is truly of, by, and for the people,” Obama said immediately after his inauguration. “As I often said during the campaign, we need to make the White House the people’s house. And we need to close the revolving door that lets lobbyists come into government freely, and lets them use their time in public service as a way to promote their own interests over the interests of the American people when they leave.”
The Center for Responsive Politics notes that “as the head of an organization that lobbies but not a registered lobbyist herself, Palmieri faces the same new restrictions as anyone else who enters the Obama administration — but she does not qualify for the special restrictions for a “lobbyist entering government.”
