Transparency – Obama Style
President Obama, on his first day in office, promised transparency would be the touchstone of his administration. Quoting Macon Phillips, Directory of New Media for the White House in his posting [1] on The White House Blog, “President Obama has committed to making his administration the most open and transparent in history.”
Well, shame on us for not remember the “political word lesson” of the last Democrat to occupy The Oval Office; remember the “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is”[2] vocabulary lesson of President Clinton. You see, I like most of you, probably thought that when President Obama promised Transparency he meant he would be above board with the American people, that there would be openness, real dialog, real leadership efforts in bipartisanship.
Silly us; We did not realize that the transparency he was referencing was his transparent effort to use the platform of a Health Care Summit as a launching pad for persuading Democrat members of the House of Representatives to jam this massive health care reform bill through on a reconciliation vote; a procedure put in place to aid the budgetary process. I watched all seven plus hours of the summit. It was transparently clear that the president and his fellow Democrats are more about marketing then substance.
Throughout the entire day, virtually every statement made by him or the Democrat participants included the verbiage “we are close to an agreement”. He repeatedly listed obvious “goals” that no-one would challenge as if there was agreement on how to achieve those goals:
- We agree that everyone should have access to healthcare
- We agree that there is waste in the system
- We agree that the sun will come out tomorrow, bet your bottom dollar on tomorrow (sorry, I digress)
In addition to stating these obvious lofty goals as though the means to reaching those goals were irrelevant, he transparently brushed aside Republican points of substance on the nation’s debt, on the role of Federal Government vs. a Market-Driven solution as mere talking points.
Then, there was this transparent, duplicitous, jab at Sen. John McCain as he dressed the senator down for his remarks on the process and the numerous “special interest” aspects of the legislation:
Notice how the President refers to Sen. McCain by his first name “John” instead of “Senator”. This is an old trick used by lawyers, negotiators, interrogators, etc. If you want to put a person of stature “in his place”, you call them by their first name. That was just the glancing blow of this transparent “jab” at Sen. McCain. He quickly followed that up with his duplicitous remark, “the election is over”; as if to say, “Sen. McCain, your concerns are irrelevant. How we go about this is none of your concern. You’re just mad that I won the election and you didn’t. So why don’t you just sit there, keep your mouth shut, and act like a good little senator. If I need your opinion, I’ll give it to you.”
Transparency Obama Style – I suspect it’s not quite the Hope and Change those who voted for President Obama had in mind.
Footnotes:
[1] http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/change_has_come_to_whitehouse-gov/
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