Yesterday, Barack Obama had some fine words for the people he’s chosen to serve in his administration. No surprise there; Barack Obama always has fine words. I particularly appreciate this:
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. . . .Let me say it as simply as I can: Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.
Fine words, indeed, and a noble aim—but fine words only mean something if people take them seriously, and a noble aim is little but moonbeams if not pursued with determination. So the question is, how are we seeing this realized? The answer, unfortunately, is that President Obama’s senior appointees have already begun to betray their boss on this point. Timothy Geithner, Treasury Secretary-designee, first offered the Senate dubious excuses for his failure to pay his taxes, then finally seems to have lied to them about it; Eric Holder, meanwhile, the nominee for Attorney General, has already been caught in a bald-faced lie. Whatever your opinion about President Obama’s ability to deliver the change he promised, I think we can all agree this isn’t it.
I definitely agree that it seems Timothy Geithner can’t deliver on Obama’s promises. A lot remains to be seen of what Obama will be like – which is a good thing and also an alarming thing, as has been pointed out. I’d say that his first day is the direct inverse of Bush’s first day, however, during which I think he attacked every environmental protection he could get his hands on. I’m not sure why increasing the amount of arsenic allowable in drinking water tenfold was on Bush’s first-day agenda, but I’m pretty damn happy with Obama so far, especially by comparison. We’ll see if anything comes of it, but he’s off to a start that…well, that doesn’t make me sick to my stomach with rage and disgust.
And that’s a feeling I’ve gotten used to over the past eight years.
My main concerns about Obama aren’t some doofus forgetting about his taxes, but rather around things like abortion and stem cell research. It looks like he wants to recklessly get rid of any kind of limitations on both, and I think that’s a mistake which has a high moral cost…
I’m completely in agreement with your last paragraph, and actually with a lot of your first paragraph as well. The thing is, though, looking at the first day of the Obama administration, I see a lot of show for the Left, but not a lot of substance behind it. I know there are a lot of conservatives who are pleased by this (they’d rather believe he’s a Clinton-level naked political opportunist than a man of political integrity), but for all that I find the real policy directions that seem to be emerging here much more reassuring than the ones I expected to see . . . I’d rather have a president of real political and personal integrity who disagrees with me, than have policies that are closer to what I would vote for just because that’s what’s politically expedient.
And I have to note, recklessly getting rid of any kind of limitations on abortion and ESCR is part of the party platform you signed up for. Maybe this is your mission, Doug, or part of it: help raise up a pro-life Left. Jared over on The Thinklings was praying the other day that God would raise up an MLK for the unborn; someone suggested that would have to be a woman, and maybe it would; but more importantly, though, I think that will probably need to be someone who is, otherwise, a person of the Left who can speak to the Left from within their own ranks. Only Nixon could go to China . . .