Since we’re now into February and the new administration is underway, it seems a reasonable time to stop and evaluate what Barack Obama’s “new politics” look like so far.
- Announce strict new rules on the hiring of lobbyists—then refuse to apply them to anyone you actually want to appoint.
- Declare a new era of transparency and accountability—then stop posting transcripts of the daily White House press briefing (and, in fact, remove the old ones), irritatedly duck questions you don’t want to answer, and allow your appointees to lie to the Senate.
- Declare that along with transparency, the rule of law will be one of the touchstones of your administration—then appoint people to your cabinet who don’t pay their taxes until they get a cabinet appointment (or perhaps some time after that); throw in the fact that one of those appointees, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (whom even liberals think is a sleazebag), was named to regulate an industry which paid him more than $220,000 over the last two years.
- Declare an end to the Bush administration’s approach to dealing with terrorists—such as “the imposition of stringent limitations on the ways in which U.S. agents can question terror suspects, an executive order mandating the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, and the freezing of all detainee prosecutions”—but leave enough loopholes to ensure that the rules don’t have to be applied if they’re ever inconvenient.
In short, posture a lot about things like “the greatest ethical standard ever administered to an executive branch,” “bringing change to Washington,” and “the moral high ground” to cover over the fact that the reality is just D.C. business as usual. Funny, but the “new politics” looks just like the old politics.Update: Including the fact that the American people will only put up with so much. Tuesday afternoon, Tom Daschle withdrew his nomination.