Junior government and politics major
President Obama’s policy goals in his 2008 presidential campaign were historic in many ways. A campaign for expanded health coverage, tough financial regulation, a crackdown on Wall Street recklessness, and the end of our long wars in the Middle East symbolized a big change from the Bush administration’s years in the White House.
Another less remembered but equally important focus of Obama’s campaign was on government transparency. In a 2009 speech, the president claimed “I ran for president promising transparency, and I meant what I said.” In February 2013, he made the claim that “This is the most transparent administration in history.”
Whether either of those claims was true is now largely irrelevant in the wake of the Obama administration’s decision to remove the federal regulations under the Freedom of Information Act that applied to the White House’s Office of Administration. In my view, the president’s decision to remove these important regulations signifies the termination of this office’s designation as “the most transparent administration in history”.
Essentially, the regulatory change removes the public request process that would lead to any discretionary disclosures from the Office of Administration, which oversees emailing amongst White House accounts. While the White House points to a 2009 court ruling that supports the decision, I would argue that the move to remove these pro-transparency regulations is the wrong move at the wrong time.
The timing of this change is especially interesting in the wake of the Hillary Clinton scandal. While there’s plenty of debate over whether Clinton’s emailing habits were an issue, one thing is for sure: They’ve increased plenty of people’s wariness over the transparency and accountability of those who run our country. For the White House to decide to hinder access to information over the emails in their offices will only deepen mistrust in the government.
Keep in mind that the original decision to give the public better access to the Office of Administration was a big step in increasing government transparency and was a decision made in the first year of Obama’s presidency. In large part, Obama’s pro-transparency stance was in response to all of the dissatisfaction and suspicion surrounding the Bush administration on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But of course that’s all over now, and a president who could have done a lot to gain the trust of the American people has failed to meet the expectations he put in our eyes.
Perhaps President Obama should listen to the wise words of a young president: “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.”
Those words were his own. Yet they don’t seem to be his convictions any longer.
Sam Wallace is a junior government and politics major. He can be reached at swallacedbk@gmail.com.
