Remember that old story about the pot and the kettle. Well, Tom Edsall of the Huffington Post reports today that John McCain, the once-crusading reformer, has more lobbyists on his staff than any other ’08 presidential candidate.

Two of his top guns are Congressmen-turned-lobbyists Tom Loeffler of Texas and Slade Gordon of Washington, who represent clients such PhrMA, the powerful pharmaceutical industry trade group whose influence McCain used to regularly deride. McCain called the Medicare privatization bill of 2003 the "Leave No Lobbyist Behind Bill." Now those very same lobbyists are members of his inner circle.

One of McCain’s top operatives is Charlie Black, an ally of Ahmad Chalabi and Lockheed Martin, another company McCain has criticized for its sweetheart deals with the Defense Department. (Black’s lobbying firm, BKSH & Associates, also happens to be a subsidiary of Burson-Marsteller, the huge PR firm run by Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist, Mark Penn.)

On the flipside, Edsall reports that of the major Democratic candidates Barack Obama has the fewest ties to K Street. Perhaps that’s why he just gave the strongest speech yet of this campaign season about how to clean up the cesspool in Washington.

"From Jack Abramoff to Tom Delay, from briberies to indictments, the scandals that have plagued Washington over the last few years have been too numerous to recall," Obama told voters in New Hampshire on Friday.

"But their most troubling aspect goes far beyond the headlines that focus on the culprits and their crimes. It’s an entire culture in Washington – some of it legal, some of it not – that allows this to happen. Because what’s most outrageous is not the morally offensive conduct on behalf of these lobbyists and legislators, but the morally offensive laws and decisions that get made as a result.

It was a great speech. One that almost made me yearn for the McCain of 2000.