Arkady
President
One of the things that appealed to me about Obama in 2008 was my honest belief that he'd conduct a more transparent administration -- not just more transparent than the black pit of the Bush years, but more transparent even than the Clinton administration. This wasn't some starry-eyed Obama infatuation. I was a reluctant Obama supporter, and I recognized he was the kind of scumbag who'd lie through his teeth to get elected (as when he pretended we could have healthcare that included a rule against excluding pre-existing conditions, without any kind of requirement that people have coverage, which only a moron could have HONESTLY thought was possible). But, when it came to transparency, I really did think he'd be an improvement. After all, Obama spoke frequently and eloquently about the issue, which is something that McCain certainly wasn't doing, and that you seldom heard from Edwards and Hillary Clinton, either:
http://www.propublica.org/article/obama-details-promises-for-transparency-1107
It appeared to be a key issue for Obama, and that made me very hopeful.
Unfortunately, the reality could hardly have been more different from the promise of his campaign. Although you can make a decent case Obama's been a good president overall (he got us out of Iraq, got the economy growing again, repaired our reputation internationally, took baby steps in the direction of addressing global warming, and pushed through the first major reform to our train wreck of a healthcare system in generations), it's hard to ignore the fact he's been an absolute nightmare when it comes to transparency.
Not only was this not a marked improvement from the Bush years, I'd argue that things are much worse. Obama, for example, has held far fewer press conferences than Bush (who had a shameful lack of them in his own right). Obama's administration is worse about responding to Freedom of Information Act requests than Bush's was, too. Obama's administration has also used the Espionage Act to prosecute more whistle blowers as spies than all other administrations combined. And the treatment of one such whistle-blower, Army Private Bradley Manning, has been so terrible as to draw condemnation from international human rights watchdogs. The UN's leading anti-torture official investigated the treatment and said it was "cruel, inhuman and degrading," and concluded that it may have risen to the definition of torture.
Of course, even as the Obama administration was waging a war on whistle-blowers, stonewalling information requests, and refusing to speak with reporters, it was also playing with some gimmicks to give the appearance of greater transparency -- like a system that allows online petitioners to prompt a response from the White House on issues that interest them.... like a proposal for building a Death Star. But when you move past the gimmicks and look at the fundamental issues that affect how important information flows from our Executive Branch to the American People, Obama has been a terrible president:
http://www.salon.com/2013/05/22/on_freedom_of_speech_obama_nixon_comparisons_are_apt/
http://www.propublica.org/article/obama-details-promises-for-transparency-1107
It appeared to be a key issue for Obama, and that made me very hopeful.
Unfortunately, the reality could hardly have been more different from the promise of his campaign. Although you can make a decent case Obama's been a good president overall (he got us out of Iraq, got the economy growing again, repaired our reputation internationally, took baby steps in the direction of addressing global warming, and pushed through the first major reform to our train wreck of a healthcare system in generations), it's hard to ignore the fact he's been an absolute nightmare when it comes to transparency.
Not only was this not a marked improvement from the Bush years, I'd argue that things are much worse. Obama, for example, has held far fewer press conferences than Bush (who had a shameful lack of them in his own right). Obama's administration is worse about responding to Freedom of Information Act requests than Bush's was, too. Obama's administration has also used the Espionage Act to prosecute more whistle blowers as spies than all other administrations combined. And the treatment of one such whistle-blower, Army Private Bradley Manning, has been so terrible as to draw condemnation from international human rights watchdogs. The UN's leading anti-torture official investigated the treatment and said it was "cruel, inhuman and degrading," and concluded that it may have risen to the definition of torture.
Of course, even as the Obama administration was waging a war on whistle-blowers, stonewalling information requests, and refusing to speak with reporters, it was also playing with some gimmicks to give the appearance of greater transparency -- like a system that allows online petitioners to prompt a response from the White House on issues that interest them.... like a proposal for building a Death Star. But when you move past the gimmicks and look at the fundamental issues that affect how important information flows from our Executive Branch to the American People, Obama has been a terrible president:
http://www.salon.com/2013/05/22/on_freedom_of_speech_obama_nixon_comparisons_are_apt/
