August Cole reports on the Pentagon.

The nominee for the Defense Department’s No. 2 job got a pass on President Barack Obama‘s tough new ethics rules.

After a long stint as a senior Washington operations executive at Raytheon Co., William J. Lynn is poised to head back to the Pentagon to become the deputy secretary of defense. He was a registered lobbyist for the giant defense contractor from 2003 through June 2008.

Peter Orszag, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said in a statement that “it is in the public interest to grant the waiver given Mr. Lynn’s qualifications for his position and the current national security situation.” Specifically, the waiver covers a “revolving door ban” designed to address appointees’ conflicts of interest with former employers or clients during and after their government service.

Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he was satisfied with the waiver and expected Lynn will follow the relevant ethics rules.

Sen. John McCain, who lost to Obama in the November election, was less than happy with the waiver. “I am disappointed in President Obama’s decision to waive the ‘revolving door’ provisions of the executive order for Mr. Bill Lynn,” McCain said in a statement. “While I applaud the president’s action to implement new, more stringent ethical rules, I had hoped he would not find it necessary to waive them so soon.”

Still, McCain didn’t say he would vote for or against the 55-year-old Raytheon official, adding, “I intend to ask him to clarify for the record what matters and decisions will require his recusal.”