Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
The LA Times politics blog nails Obama for yet another baldfaced lie on White House transparency. During the campaign, Obama blasted the Bush administration for allowing lobbyists to influence policy and not revealing to the public who they had met with and discussed policy with. This was in relation to the energy bill that was passed early in the administration when Bush refused access to White House logs of oil and coal executives who had met with the administration. Here's what Obama said about these issues while campaigning:
The ProblemLobbyists Write National Policies: For example, Vice President Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force of oil and gas lobbyists met secretly to develop national energy policy.
And on the issue of releasing presidential records such as those the Bush administration refused to release in relation to those oil and gas lobbyists, Obama promised to:
Make White House Communications Public: Obama will amend executive orders to ensure that communications about regulatory policymaking between persons outside government and all White House staff are disclosed to the public...Release Presidential Records: Obama and Biden will nullify the Bush attempts to make the timely release of presidential records more difficult.
Now from broken promises to reality:
Obama administration officials have rejected a watchdog group's request for a list of healthcare industry executives who've been meeting secretly in the White House with Obama staffers to discuss healthcare changes being drafted there and in Congress.According to the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which is suspicious of the influence of health industry lobbyists and company officers, it received a letter from the Secret Service citing an Obama Justice Department directive and denying access to visitor logs under the "presidential communications privilege."
CREW is the same group that sued the Bush administration for this. And the Obama administration is making the same response the Bush administration did, despite its criticism of Bush for doing so and its promise not to do so. Just another lie.
Politics
Comments
Hey Ed, they just reversed course, finally.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/07/22/obama-admin-releases-list-of-health-care-execs-to-visit-wh/
Looks like the WH finally realized that they really didn't need to give their opponents more ammo against Obama's efforts to reform healthcare.
Posted by: Will Cowan | July 23, 2009 10:15 AM
Will- the tone-deafness is still worrying and frustrating, even though they backed off in this particular instance.
What we're seeing is the same ratchet effect that constructed the imperial presidency in the first place. Each new President discovers that, regardless of what he may have said while campaigning, the novel powers arrogated by his predecessor actually come in kind of handy for getting out of tight corners, and he becomes loathe to give them up.
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | July 23, 2009 10:22 AM
Oh, don't get me wrong, I know that and have been very disappointed in the lack of transparency and, in particular, in the lack of will to investigate such abuses by the past administration. Every day I hope Eric Holder will appoint a special prosecutor, and every day that hope fades...
Posted by: Will Cowan | July 23, 2009 10:28 AM
Actually, they didn't reverse course. They released only part of the information, just the names and dates, not the more detailed visitor logs that would tell which White House official they met with and other things. And they're still saying that they have no legal obligation to release even that information despite two federal court rulings to the contrary - and despite Obama's own campaign promises to reverse on this issue.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | July 23, 2009 10:39 AM
Ah, thanks for dashing my hopes for change once again, Ed. It really is "Meet the new boss..." isn't it?
Posted by: Will Cowan | July 23, 2009 10:47 AM
This came up at the press conference last night.
Posted by: Chris Bell | July 23, 2009 11:01 AM
I watched the Obama press conference last evening and believed Obama's response was somewhat disingenuous. First Obama argued that the vast majority of meetings with health executives, the press was in attendance at the start of the meetings for photo ops. Obama also conveyed that the White House had released a letter of vistors based on the LA Times' request, I assume consistent with Ed's claims in this blog post regarding its falling short of authentic transparency.
However, I have a problem with Obama given that in his campaign, he didn't merely say he would do things different, but instead continually promised to change the process for how things are done to yield better results - those are two distinctly different approaches where process improvements are normally far superior - this "promise" was a major factor in my voting for Obama, especially given I disagree with him on many policy issues.
So while I might sympathize with Obama's mild exasperation last night at the claim he was being opaque given the press was supposedly in attendance at the very meetings he's accused of hiding from the public, I do not expect mere published letters when challenged. Instead I expect on-line log books updated continuously that contain the type of information we should expect out of a self-proclaimed transparent government - that's a process improvement, not merely writing letters only after being challenged.
Posted by: Michael Heath | July 23, 2009 11:34 AM
Don't get me wrong, Ed. I'm a huge fan of your blog and really enjoyed your videos on the Dover trial and all that. However, I take exception to your characterization of this is a "lie". A lie is when you say something that you know to be untrue. For all we know, Obama fully intended to keep his promises on this and other topics. To call it a lie is inaccurate and smacks of rhetoric rather than reporting. For it to be a lie, you would have to know that he never intended to keep his promises. That is something that I don't think anybody can know for sure. You can call it a "flip-flop" or a "reversal" (or, "broken promises" as you used later) and add whatever antagonistic adjectives you want to that and I'd have no problem with it. It really bothers me that you'd call it a "lie" when there is no evidence to support that he said something he knew to be untrue. This is the kind of thing that our opponents like to do. The same thing goes for factual errors. If Obama or anybody else said something that was factually untrue but they thought it to be true when they said it, they would not be lying.
I appreciate you taking Obama to task for these things but I hate to see this kind of rhetorical antagonism where it isn't required. I have seen this many times on your blog. I hope you'll give my opinion some consideration.
Thanks.
Posted by: Dave G | July 23, 2009 1:25 PM
Heh, our college president also promised transparency when he was hired. Turns out his version of transparency is, "I'll let you know when I've made a decision." I hate to be cheaply cynical, but I suspect that people who truly do practice transparency don't normally bother to boast about it.
Posted by: James Hanley | July 23, 2009 2:14 PM