Did you hear the one about how the lobbyist for the drug industry, former Congressman Billy Tauzin, completely rolled Obama’s top notch team of Rahm Emanuel and Jim Messina? You didn’t? Well, it’s on the front page of today’s New York Times. There’s a lot wrong with what we learn in this article:

Drug industry lobbyists reacted with alarm this week to a House health care overhaul measure that would allow the government to negotiate drug prices and demand additional rebates from drug manufacturers. In response, the industry successfully demanded that the White House explicitly acknowledge for the first time that it had committed to protect drug makers from bearing further costs in the overhaul. The Obama administration had never spelled out the details of the agreement. “We were assured: ‘We need somebody to come in first. If you come in first, you will have a rock-solid deal,’ ” Billy Tauzin, the former Republican House member from Louisiana who now leads the pharmaceutical trade group, said Wednesday. “Who is ever going to go into a deal with the White House again if they don’t keep their word? You are just going to duke it out instead.” A deputy White House chief of staff, Jim Messina, confirmed Mr. Tauzin’s account of the deal in an e-mail message on Wednesday night. “The president encouraged this approach,” Mr. Messina wrote. “He wanted to bring all the parties to the table to discuss health insurance reform.”

Weak, weak response from Mr. Messina. He and Mr. Emanuel were supposed to be the two smartest, toughest, savviest guys around. They were going to impose order and get things done. Instead, they were outsmarted by Billy Tauzin. And, there are potential repercussions for losing at this high stakes game:

The new attention to the agreement could prove embarrassing to the White House, which has sought to keep lobbyists at a distance, including by refusing to hire them to work in the administration. The White House commitment to the deal with the drug industry may also irk some of the administration’s Congressional allies who have an eye on drug companies’ profits as they search for ways to pay for the $1 trillion cost of the health legislation.

The White House staffers look like amateurs. And, why does the drug industry warrant such an insider deal?