At a forum at George Washington University Tuesday, White House ethics adviser Norman Eisen touted the "open-door" policies of the White House and said that restrictions the administration has placed on lobbyists have been created in the interest of striving for merit-based decision-making.

"What we have attempted to do in defining the public interest is to embark on a ... compact with the American people that we will not be subjected to the influences ... that have waylaid good policy, but really will attempt to be guided by that point on the horizon that represents the best thing for the country," said Eisen, who was a partner at law firm Zuckerman Spaeder and co-founded watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington before joining the administration.

Eisen said that the administration recognizes that there are challenges in figuring out how to create a transparent and effective policy-making environment, but is gathering "evidence" on the impact of ethics rules by meeting with lobbyists to hear their opinions.

"One of the striking things that does not come across [in the media] is the level of agreement that lobbyists and others have with us with respect to the stimulus lobbying rules," Eisen said.

I received this email from a non-profit lobbyist who did not want their name or organization to be made public:

This is to follow-up on your non-profit article.  The problem isn't that the
Ex. Order is a bad idea, but rather that no one in the WH seems to be able
to read/understand it.  The Order says - no lobbying the executive branch
for two years except for ... getting a waiver or if your lobbying activity
was de minimus.  So what did they do but apply it to the guy who worked for
Raytheon and skip over those who lobbied for things as varied as
Darfur, SCHIP or green jobs, issues which match the Obama agenda.

The idea to exempt non-profits from the Order is useful but really doesn't
solve the core of the problem, i.e., that the Pres. Personnel folks don't
seem to be able to understand what the Order actually says.  Most certainly,
it is proof that political people should be in charge of the decision-making
rather than academics since at a minimum, Personnel should understand just
how much talent they are wasting, and in some cases, embarrassing , as well
as sadly destroying careers of people who are friends of the Obama Administration.

My fear is this is hurting Obama in ways we haven't even seen yet, and all of us must make sure he succeeds because if
he fails, our country will also fail.

I think the better ask would be for the Order's waiver procedure to be used
whenever the person who lobbied worked on an issue that matches the Obama
Agenda, and for the Order's two year prohibition to be applied only to the
Executive Branch rather than to the House and Congress as they have been
doing.  Of course, this means that the waiver process should be used liberally rather than only for the Raytheon kinds of folks.

I might add that for all c3's and all c4's to automatically be exempted, would result in
many right-wing conservative organizations getting their noses into the tent, and
then - as above, the Personnel folks would actually have to learn how to
read and understand what they read – using judgment, to be sure that the people they choose
are committed to the Obama Agenda, as could be done right now, if they
wanted actually would read the Order and the accompanying advisory.

One related problem has to do with the Administration's choices for job
recruiting firms - one managed the K Street Project for the Republicans and another
was used by Bush 1 to find jobs for his outgoing appointees.  This is not
good either.

And my last point is that there seems to be agencies where the appointees
(who did not lobby) have absolutely no background in what the agency
actually does, but yes, they have lovely PHD's on their records.  If those
folks had lobbying experience they would at least have understood which
parts of government do what.