Christmas for Obama Bundlers

 Merry Crony-mas! It’s time to pass out the goodies. While President Obama’s lips champion the middle class, his administration’s old hands are preparing to lavish rewards on the creme de la campaign creme: his wealthiest political donors.

Several media outlets reported this week that the White House is consideringfashion doyenne Anna Wintour [1] for a possible appointment [2] as U.S. ambassador to Great Britain or France.

The rumored short list also includes Obama campaign finance chairman Matthew Barzun and investment banker Marc Lasry. The three share one common, er, “qualification”: Each raked in [3] more than $500,000 for Team Obama 2012.

As previously reported [4] in this column, Wintour held multiple million-dollar fundraisers for Obama in Hollywood, New York, London and Paris — raking in the fourth highest [5] amount for the Man of the (Glamorous) People. Wintour’s $40,000-per-plate dinners attracted Hollywood’s biggest leftist celebs.

She went further than just passing around the fashion plate, though. Before Election Day, the fashion world buzzed over the British-born Vogue editor’s behind-the-scenes campaign to intimidate designers into spurning GOP women [6]. Such Chicago-style diplomacy will fit in perfectly with the brass-knuckle-wielder-in-chief.

If Wintour snags the plum British ambassadorship as rumored, she will succeed another top Obama bundler known as “the vacuum cleaner.” [7] Chicago lawyer and banking mogul Louis Susman [8] (who worked for Salomon Brothers and retired as a Citigroup vice chairman in February 2009) had no diplomatic experience. But he vacayed and sashayed with the Kennedys and the Kerrys in Hyannis Port and Nantucket, siphoned up a total of $240 million for Democrats over the past several decades, and bundled upward of $500,000 for Team Obama.

Ambassadorships have long been used as patronage rewards for deep-pocketed donors, of course. Clinton did it. The Bushes did it. And Hopey McChangey immediately followed suit [9]. In his first term [10], Obama awarded ambassadorships to California bundler John Roos, who was dispatched to Japan; California bundler and campaign finance co-chair Charles Rivkin, who took up the ambassadorial post in France; law partner and bundler Laurie Fulton, who was sent to Denmark; and Boston money man Alan Solomont, who won the appointment to Spain.

Moreover, a recent investigation by the Government Accountability Institute [11] found that more than half of the most politically active 50 campaign bundlers for Obama won appointments to a presidential council, committee, board or other White House post.

Shameless defenders of Obama’s business as usual are now floating the sexism card [12] to defend Wintour’s possible appointment. “The snark directed at the idea of Anna Wintour as ambassador to the UK seems to be 99 percent sexism. The bundler-to-embassy route isn’t new,” sniffed lefty writer Matthew Yglesias.

Silly “progressive.” It would be sexist not to heap deserved scorn onto the naked back-scratching at play here.

“It is no coincidence that the best bundlers are often granted the greatest access, and access is power in Washington [13],” a vocal critic of the practice once said. “Special interests,” the critic thundered, have “turned our government into a game only they can afford to play [14].”

Who said it? Candidate Barack “Do as I say” Obama, circa 2007-08.

Forget the “forward” rhetoric. Cut the populist crap. Retro access peddling never goes out of style in Washington: To the victor’s elitist bundlers go the spoils.

Michelle Malkin [email [15] her] is the author of Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores [16] . Click here [17] for Peter Brimelow’s review. Click here [18] for Michelle Malkin's website. Michelle Malkin is also author of Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild [19] and Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies [20].