looks like Obama did write it. here is another article:
Campaign Pledge on Ethics Could Become Obstacle to Filling White House Jobs
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: November 5, 2008
President-elect Barack Obama, now recruiting for his administration, is trying to fulfill campaign promises of sweeping ethics restrictions that could deter some potential appointees.
Doug Mills/The New York Times
David Axelrod, a top Obama aide, is not a lobbyist but is a partner in a public advocacy group.
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Vowing to combat the power of “lobbyists who kill good ideas and good plans with secret meetings and campaign checks,” Mr. Obama has laid out more detailed and more onerous ethics rules than any previous president. He has pledged to bar appointees from working on matters involving their former employers for two years, prohibit departing officials from lobbying his administration for its duration, and require all political appointees to publicly disclose every meeting with registered lobbyists.
But in a city where policy experts typically work for private interests between stints in public service — and often have spouses or family members in the same business — such measures could hamper the new administration, scholars and ethics experts say.
“The problem for Obama is that he will be limiting himself in the expertise he can tap,” said Martha Kumar, a Towson University professor who studies presidential transitions, noting that President Bill Clinton faced a similar difficulty with less sweeping rules.
Some Republicans see a trove of political ammunition in Mr. Obama’s promises about public transparency. He has pledged to post online all of his appointees’ employment histories and personal financial disclosures, along with regular updates of any meetings or conversations they hold with registered lobbyists.
“If they want to hold themselves to that standard of transparency, then they will be ridiculed continuously, in incessant attacks from the outside,” said David Bossie, an operative who once specialized in unflattering research on the Clinton White House and now heads the conservative group Citizens United.
Others are already noting the potential gaps in the rules. Many people in Washington make money by consulting for private interests seeking to influence the government but without engaging in the specific activities that require registration as a lobbyist, thus sidestepping some of Mr. Obama’s restrictions.
“There are so many people who don’t have to register that it captures not so many,” Ms. Kumar said.
Some of the challenges and potential ambiguities in Mr. Obama’s lofty goals are already apparent in his presidential transition team, which will help select his administration’s senior staff.
Mr. Obama has required everyone advising his transition team to remove themselves from matters involving a broad spectrum of potential conflicts of interest — issues in which the adviser has a financial interest, in which family or business associates have a financial interest, or on which the person lobbied over the previous year. In cases of an appearance of conflict, Christopher Lu, the transition team’s executive director and a member of Mr. Obama’s Senate staff, must referee.
But John D. Podesta, a former Clinton administration chief of staff and the leader of the transition team, presents several potential questions.
Mr. Podesta is the chairman of the Center for American Progress, a liberal research group that solicits private donations and lobbies on a variety of issues. While he has not personally acted as a registered lobbyist in the last year, according to the disclosure filings for the center’s political advocacy arm, he had earlier lobbied on issues including the war and reconstruction in Iraq, Defense Department spending, the treatment of military detainees, energy issues, bio-fuels and oil prices.
And his brother Tony is the chairman of a major lobbying firm, the Podesta Group, which the brothers founded together two decades ago.
In an interview, Tony Podesta said that he bought his brother out of the firm in 1996 and that the firm banned lobbying John Podesta while he was in the government, either in the Clinton White House or the Obama transition. To comply with the Obama ethics rules, Tony Podesta said jokingly, “I am taking my brother out of my will.”
Former Senator Tom Daschle, a top Obama campaign adviser considered to be a candidate for a prominent White House job, does not engage in the specific activities that require him to register as a lobbyist. But he is a highly paid member of the law and lobbying firm Alston & Bird, where he sells strategic political advice about a variety of matters that have recently included the financial industry bailout. And his wife, Linda Daschle, is a registered lobbyist specializing in defense and aerospace clients. (The Daschles declined to comment.)
David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s top campaign strategist and another likely candidate for a White House job, is not a lobbyist either. But he is a partner in a public advocacy group that has helped corporate clients including the telecommunications companies AT&T, Cablevision and SBC Communications; Household Financial, a subprime mortgage lender; Wisconsin Energy, a coal-fired power company; the nuclear power giant Exelon; and a coalition that pushes deregulation of the electricity markets.
Still, several Republicans expressed admiration for Mr. Obama’s effort. “It is impressive, very ambitious, with some very laudable objectives — minimizing conflicts of interest and self-dealing, slowing the revolving door, increasing transparency,” said Jan Baran, a Republican political law expert who served on a commission on ethics rules for the first President Bush.
Joe Gaylord, a Republican consultant and former adviser to Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, said: “It could be of value to opposition researchers. But I guess I would applaud it. It might not be terrific for the president-elect, but it would be great for America, huh?”
Mr. Clinton set the previous high bar for White House ethics rules, with mixed results. He required political appointees to pledge that for five years they would not lobby the government agencies where they had worked, and that for the rest of their careers they would not lobby on behalf of a foreign government.
But even those rules were widely criticized as too onerous for many in Washington. “Much too burdensome,” said Paul Light, a public-ethics expert at New York University.
Whether in response to his appointees’ complaints or his own political timetable, Mr. Clinton rescinded his rules in his last week in office.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/06/us/politics/06lobby.html?ref=politics
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