Transparency

Posted 2/25/2009 9:31 PM PST on The Sacramento Bee
If this administration wants transparency, it is going to have to take the time to instruct its members, particularly those who speak with the press in how the US comes up with budgets and how it manages the process. Otherwise, the Whitehouse press corps is going to dismantle them one body part at a time.

The President swept into office with the voters and the press in genuine love with him. And that is fine, but he needs to realize that the campaign is over for the next eighteen months and he needs to stop acting like a candidate and start acting like a President. If he needs just one warning about “transparency”, I’ll give it to him:

President James Earl Carter Jr.

Governor Carter was also swept in by a loving electorate and doting press as he too said Washington would become America’s fishbowl. He quickly discovered that the halls of DC work largely in the shadows because while politicians regardless of political stripe love to go back home and tell their constituents what they got for them, they don’t like too many people to know what they had to give up to get it.

Governor Carter also discovered that the only thing the press liked more than Cousin Jimmy himself was the opportunity to start throwing darts at him. They did too, because it became clear that the man was a truly decent guy, but he knew nothing about playing politics in the big leagues.

The Congress didn’t care for what they regarded as interference in their affairs and demonstrated this by giving him trouble with various bills he wanted passed. Eventually he actually called them “ravenous wolves”.

Then there was an ongoing energy crisis, a stagflated economy, some very inopportune presidential statements to the public, and a whole lot of lousy foreign policy situations, not the least of which was the hostage crisis in Iran. Add to this an interesting cast of family members and you had a show that no reporter in his right mind would pass up.

Former President Carter began to realize why transparency was a hard thing to achieve. The press corps that loved him so much during the election began to smell blood when the Carter Administration stopped talking so much. The result was Former President Carter becoming Former President Carter four years earlier than he wanted to.

Unlike others of my political persuasion, I do not want the new President to fail. I don’t think that would be good for anyone. But before he was elected I smelled an emerging Carter II presidency and while the big guy on the radio may be looking forward to it, I don’t want that.

The new administration needs to learn how to handle information transparently while doing so in a way that doesn’t suggest they are hiding something. I know this is a contradiction, but if they don’t figure it out there will be a lot more exchanges like this in the White House Press Room.



Excerpt from
Briefing by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, 2/25/2009
THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary


Q I wanted to come back to Chuck's question about the $2 trillion figure that the President used last night of savings over the next 10 years. We were told last night that that basically referred to two things. One is the expiration of the tax cuts on the wealthy that would happen next year. And two is a reduction of what we are currently spending in Iraq --

MR. GIBBS: I think that's a -- I think that's certainly a decent part of it.

Q Okay. But let me ask -- is it transparent to say that tax increases are part of savings? And is it transparent to say that we're going to be saving that much from Iraq when nobody expects that 10 years out we would be spending what we're spending today in Iraq? Even the previous administration agreed to get out of Iraq by 2012. And that's the baseline you're culling savings from.

MR. GIBBS: It isn't -- I mean, if we're not spending the money, and the money doesn't go out the door, and the money doesn't increase the deficit, and the deficit decreases by some amount, ultimately getting you to the President's goal of having a $1.2 trillion to $1.3 trillion deficit in his first four years in office --

Q But nobody expects to spend 10 years from now what we're spending today in Iraq. And if we use that as our baseline, saying, oh, we're saving because we're not spending what we did 10 years ago, I mean, isn't that sort of setting up a funny money comparison?

MR. GIBBS: No, I don't think so at all.

Q Does a tax increase count as savings?

MR. GIBBS: Again, it's -- you've got additional revenue -- as the President I think clearly said, tax cuts for people that are -- for families that are making $250,000 or more a year, quarter of a million dollars or more -- again, that's an increase in the amount of money that --

Q But you said you've identified savings. That's not really a savings.

MR. GIBBS: Again, I think some of this will be clearer when we can be -- can give you physically a budget for you to look at.