So Much for Openness!

“Obama closes door on openness,” reads the headline of Michael Isikoff’s article from the June 29 issue of Newsweek.

Isikoff notes that while Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) criticized “secret agency meetings” the Bush administration held with oil executives, five months into the job President Obama has done the very same thing — rejecting a Freedom of Information Act request seeking visitor logs outlining what coal executives met to discuss with the Obama White House.

For President Obama, who on the campaign trail also criticized the healthcare panel Hillary Clinton organized as first lady, making such information available to the public could encroach upon “presidential communications.” It also goes against the promise of transparency Obama made a cornerstone of his campaign and then claimed to codify in his first full day in the White House.

Ever since Obama issued his blustery directive, as Isikoff points out, he has steadily weakened it, while also forbidding the release of photos containing alleged prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and keeping sealed a Department of Justice interview with former Vice President Dick Cheney from the Valerie Plame investigation (yes, Barack Obama is protecting Dick Cheney). These decisions signal that these policies are unlikely to change, especially since some of this sets precedent to protect Obama and Vice President Joe Biden after they leave office.

They say that when a door closes, a window opens. Obama has provided that window, through which we have learned the president likes a chili half-smoke and cheese fries at Ben’s Chili Bowl; a spicy or Dijon mustard for his burger at Ray’s Hell Burger and, when at La Fontaine de Mars in Paris, l’agneau roti will do nicely, thank you. And let’s not forget March Madness, when President Obama gave us full transparency by filling out his brackets — every single one of them — on ESPN.

While some may consider it charming, if not exactly vital for a democratic republic, to know the presidential picks or what President Obama orders for Parisian dinners while defending Dick Cheney, it’s not the change most Americans (and certainly not Obama loyalists) had in mind when candidate Obama talked about open and transparent government.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose …