Joel Jankowsky’s lobbying firm isn’t planning to alter its practices in any way in anticipation of a Barack Obama administration, despite the presidential frontrunner’s promise to crack down on special interests.

Jankowsky, a partner at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer and Feld, doesn’t think Obama’s efforts to curtail K Street’s access and influence will hurt lobbying by his firm or others on K Street. Akin, Gump has no plans to lay off any of its GOP talent or cut back on certain practices, he said.

In fact, Jankowsky and other lobbyists believe new ethics rules and regulations ushered in by the Democratic caucus bolster K Street’s bottom line.

Obama’s promise to bring more regulation, scrutiny and accountability will likely produce more business for K Street as the corporate world adjusts to a more intrusive environment, Jankowsky predicts.

Obama’s plan to restrain the influence-peddling industry in Washington includes an effort to stop the revolving door from the administration to K Street in its tracks.

According to his plan, no political appointees in an Obama administration will be permitted to work on regulations or contracts “directly and substantially related” to their prior employer for two years.

Furthermore, no political appointee will be able to lobby the executive branch after leaving the government during the rest of Obama’s presidency.

Obama has taken Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to task for keeping lobbyists on his campaign staff and for tapping Bill Timmons, the chairman emeritus of the small but influential Timmons and Company, to lead his White House transition team.

Nick Allard, co-chair of Patton Boggs’ public policy department, argues that Obama’s insistence on keeping his administration lobbyist-free could do more harm than good by forcing him to rely on a staff inexperienced with Washington.

“You don’t want only virgins and academics in your administration,” Allard said in a recent interview.

Republican ethics lawyer Elliot Berke said such a ban, especially during an economic downturn, could have the unintended consequence of encouraging some of the “best and brightest” players in Washington to seek jobs on Capitol Hill rather than in an Obama administration.

“It could make an administration too academic and bureaucratic, and could also make Congress, with less post-employment restrictions, a more attractive place to work,” he said. “I am not sure that sort of analysis was what the Framers intended.”

Now more than ever, Allard said people with expertise and experience — especially in banking and financial services — are needed.

Obama also plans to put all lobbying reports, government contracts, ethics records and campaign filings in a searchable, centralized online database. He also wants to use the bully pulpit to fight for an independent watchdog agency to oversee the investigation of congressional ethics violations so the “public can be assured that ethics complaints will be investigated.”

But Allard and Jankowsky said their firms also don’t fear Obama’s plans because their firms want to follow the rules and have the resources to ensure their employees abide by them.

Plans similar to Obama’s have already faced an uphill battle in Congress, and there’s little evidence that lawmakers are ready to hand outsiders even more power to scrutinize their activities.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) pushed through a controversial bill creating an Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) earlier this year. After a protracted battle with her own caucus over this key part of her ethics reforms, the OCE was given only limited ability to investigate (without subpoena power) and then only authorized to make recommendations to the full ethics panel. The ethics panel, which is made-up of lawmakers, retained the final say in policing their peers.

President Clinton also found it difficult to keep campaign promises to slow down the revolving door between government and K Street.

In his last days in office, Clinton revoked an executive order that placed a variety of post-employment lobbying restrictions on senior political appointees because Republicans had taken control of the White House and Congress and Clinton appointees were having trouble finding lucrative jobs.

Part of Obama’s ethics reform platform includes public financing of campaigns and free and television and radio time, an effort to reduce the influence of moneyed special interests. But Obama rejected public financing for his presidential campaign, abandoning an earlier pledge to participate if his GOP challenger did the same.

In fact, several watchdog organizations have warned that Obama’s $600 million fundraising juggernaut is actually undermining the public financing system and any plans to strengthen it.

Meredith McGehee, the policy director of the Campaign Legal Center, wouldn’t comment directly on the specifics of either presidential candidates’ reform plans. But, she said any candidate who wants to take aim at the power of special interests should target the money train. Anything else may be good policy, but it’s just “tinkering around the edges,” she said.

“The part that’s the most corrupting part of our system is the role lobbyists play in bundling and channeling money to candidates,” she said. “If you want to change the culture of Washington, you need to start with the money and the role of lobbyists as kingmakers and bundlers.”