It’s been long enough to ease out Desiree Rogers and put in the person that the administration really wanted: a stone-cold moneymaker.

The promotion of Julianna Smoot to White House Social Secretary is good news for wealthy donors to President Obama’s campaign, for whom Smoot — the chief campaign fundraiser — is friend and point of contact.

Smoot, who had been working in the relative obscurity of the U.S. Trade Representative’s office, will now be the key gatekeeper to the kind of social functions from which donors have complained that this administration, unlike President Clinton’s, has barred them.

(Via Hot Air Headlines) Ben Smith went on to write that this choice ‘cuts against’ existing administration rhetoric on access and accessibility; I would be interested to see the expression on his face as he wrote that bit of understatement.  Of course, I imagine that Ben no more believes that the White House meant any of that agitprop than I did, so he might have even have written the line out with a straight face.  At any rate: business is business, and the White House… is back in business.

Moe Lane

PS: Administration response? The usual way that they handle any criticism of the administration: they blamed Bush. Except, of course, that Lea Berman was VP Cheney’s social secretary before she worked on the 2004 campaign.  In contrast, Julianna Smoot’s resume says ‘finance director’ a lot.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.