WASHINGTON POST: Ex-Lobbyists Have Key Obama Roles. “Barack Obama campaigned on a pledge to change Washington, vowing to upend the K Street lobbying culture he encountered when he joined the U.S. Senate. But more than a dozen members of President-elect Obama’s fast-growing transition team have worked as federally registered lobbyists within the past four years. They include former lobbyists for the nation’s trial lawyers association, mortgage giant Fannie Mae, drug companies such as Amgen, high-tech firms such as Microsoft, labor unions and the liberal advocacy group Center for American Progress.”

Plus this artful phraseology:

In a 2007 speech, he said he was “running to tell the lobbyists in Washington that their days of setting the agenda are over. They have not funded my campaign. They won’t work in my White House.”

A few days later, he changed the phrasing to say that lobbyists “are not going to dominate my White House.”

Quite a backslide. It’ll be interesting to see if he can even live up to the watered-down promise . . . . How big a deal is this? Well, you can make too much of these appearance issues, but on the other hand, he promised an entirely new kind of government. So far, that’s looking a lot like the similar promises of rectitude from Congressional Democrats in 2006, promises that — to put it mildly — weren’t borne out once the election was over.

UPDATE: Reader Matt Mullen emails:

It’s quite a backslide to say go from saying that the days of lobbyists setting the agenda are over, to saying that they are not going to dominate my White House?

No, it’s a backslide to go from saying that “they won’t work in my White House” to saying that they won’t “dominate” it.