For some odd reason, all of this “change” actually feels quite familiar. Turns out that Obama transition adviser Thomas Donilon worked as a lobbyist to undermine the oversight structure of Fannie Mae. Surprise! ABC News reports:

One of Obama’s top transition team members, Thomas Donilon, oversaw an aggressive, backdoor lobbying campaign by mortgage giant Fannie Mae to undermine the credibility of a probe into the firm’s accounting irregularities, according to a 2006 government report on the company.

The effort — which reportedly included attacks on the funding for the oversight agency, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, and an attempt to launch a separate investigation into OFHEO itself — was ultimately unsuccessful, and regulators eventually discovered top Fannie Mae executives had been manipulating the company’s financial reporting to maximize their bonuses.

Team Obama’s response when confronted with the information by ABC?

When asked about Donilon’s place in the Obama transition team, Obama spokesperson Tommy Vietor said in a statement that “Mr. Donilon is volunteering his time and more than 30 years of accomplishment to help prepare the State Department for an efficient transition to the President-elect, who is taking office at a time of war and when we are confronting a complex and challenging international environment. Mr. Donilon’s experience in foreign affairs as Assistant Secretary of State and Chief of Staff at the State Department is critical to this review process.”

Translation: Piss off. So because he’s volunteering and his experience is “critical”, that means that he can advise the Obama transition after working to undermine the oversight structure of the mortgage giant that helped get us into this financial mess? If I remember correctly, didn’t Barack Obama actually accuse Republicans of and campaign against a reduction of oversight?

If the incoming administration’s tune sounds vaguely familiar, that’s because it’s not new. When it was discovered that Jim Johnson, the man who headed Obama’s VP search team, had actually been a the chairman at Fannie Mae at a time when the company improperly deferred $200 million in expenses, here’s what Team Obama had to say:

I would have to hire the vetter to vet the vetters. I mean at some point, we just asked people to do their assignments. Jim Johnson has a very discrete task, as does Eric Holder, and that is simply to gather up information about potential vice presidential candidates. They’re performing that job well. It’s a volunteer, unpaid position. … So these aren’t folks who are working for me, they’re not people who I have assigned to a particular job in a future administration.

Isn’t it amazing how many people involved in the failed Fannie Mae are willing to volunteer their time to help Obama? Then again, as Ed Morrissey reminds us:

…Obama took money hand over fist from Fannie/Freddie sources — over $30,000 per year while in the Senate, far outstripping anyone else in Congress.

And, uh, didn’t Obama campaign against lobbyists? Everything old is new again.