The Daily Background

I’m tempted to say that Obama’s first day in office was more productive than George W. Bush’s last whole month in office, and it might be true.

The new president received briefings on the economy, Iraq, froze the salaries of his highest paid staff to remind everyone that they’re public servants, as well as announced tough new ethics rules which closes one of the major lobbying loopholes that the last Administration left open (plus his Secretary of State was confirmed, he talked with numerous middle eastern leaders about the Isrsaeli-Palestinian crisis, and ABC News is just now reporting that he plans to order Guantanamo Bay shut down tomorrow).

All that has been getting loads of coverage but I was actually more interested in something else that’s been largely overlooked.

But one thing I was particularly struck and encouraged by today was that one of the first things he announced was a new effort towards the kind of governmental transparency that we’ve been lacking over the last eight years, well, actually pretty much forever. One of the first things Mr Obama signaled publicly as president was that the era of government secrecy for the sake of keeping embarrassing information secret was over. And although he acknowledged that there will obviously be some bumps along the way, at least that’s the tone he’s trying to set. Check out what he said about transparency and Freedom of Information Act Requests today:

The way to make government responsible is to hold it accountable. And the way to make government accountable is make it transparent so that the American people can know exactly what decisions are being made, how they’re being made, and whether their interests are being well served.

The directives I am giving my administration today on how to interpret the Freedom of Information Act will do just that. For a long time now, there’s been too much secrecy in this city. The old rules said that if there was a defensible argument for not disclosing something to the American people, then it should not be disclosed. That era is now over. Starting today, every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information but those who seek to make it known.

To be sure, issues like personal privacy and national security must be treated with the care they demand. But the mere fact that you have the legal power to keep something secret does not mean you should always use it. The Freedom of Information Act is perhaps the most powerful instrument we have for making our government honest and transparent, and of holding it accountable. And I expect members of my administration not simply to live up to the letter but also the spirit of this law.

I will also hold myself as President to a new standard of openness. Going forward, anytime the American people want to know something that I or a former President wants to withhold, we will have to consult with the Attorney General and the White House Counsel, whose business it is to ensure compliance with the rule of law. Information will not be withheld just because I say so. It will be withheld because a separate authority believes my request is well grounded in the Constitution.

Let me say it as simply as I can: Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.

Can you ever imagine those words coming out of the mouth of somebody like Dick Cheney, or Richard Nixon?

Over the last eight years especially, the government has gotten more and more secretive in the way it works, and probably for the simple reason that with all the unconstitutional behavior and corruption that’s been occurring, they’ve just got more to hide. Call me crazy, but I think Obama’s serious about this whole transparency thing. Why else would he have written a law as Senator creating the so-called “Google for Government” search engine to let citizens find out how their money is being spent so that they can identify wastefulness?

The effectiveness of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which was created during Johnson’s Administration, has seen a roller coaster ride during its 42 years in existence. Reagan crippled it, Clinton un-crippling. Bush re-crippled it, and the fact that Obama is now not only re-un-crippling it as one of his first acts, but is also signaling he wants it expanded is truly encouraging for advocates of open governance.

Take a look at what happened after Nixon left office. Huge investigations by Congress uncovered loads of wrongdoing (some of which isn’t even scheduled to be made public yet), and led to the creation of legislation mandating openness. We found out that the government had been illegally spying on and harassing Dr Martin Luther King, and we found out about Nixon’s deception during the Vietnam war, and so on and so forth. I suspect that if even one tenth of Obama’s administration officials take what our new president is saying about transparency to heart, we’ll learn a heckuva lot more about what happened under the Bush Administration than we ever dreamed.

Filed under: Z-TDB Blog