At Least We Don't Have a Headache Anymore

I believe it was George Carlin who told a joke in reaction to the trite phrase, "cheer up, things could be worse." Carlin would ask rhetorically -- "what about the guy who has the absolute worst situation in the world? There is no one worse off than he is. What condescending saying do you use with that poor guy?" Carlin's answer: "Cheer up, things could be worse, you could have a headache."

It is in this vein that the AP chose as a headline today: Report: Obama administration improves openness. The headline gives justice to neither the article that follows nor the report upon which it is based.

The report is the Secrecy Report Card 09 issued by OpenTheGovernment.org. In addition to serving as a capstone report on official secrecy in the last year of the Bush-Cheney administration, it also provides "a quick look at the openness and secrecy trends in the new Administration." Contrary to the AP's misleading headline, with respect to the Obama administration the report states that "(t)he record to date is mixed." That's a nice way of saying at least we don't have a headache anymore.

Open government advocates and citizens everywhere are entirely justified in expressing dismay with the Obama administration's record to date. It is not a case where such advocates and citizens projected their own vision on the Obama presidency. Rather, it was Obama himself who set the metrics by which the actions of his administration must be measured. He pledged an administration:

committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government (emphasis added).

It is thus essential to avoid falling into the trap of judging the current administration by simply comparing it with the prior. Yet, that is what the NY Times breathlessly does in an editorial yesterday where it effused:

Transparency doesn’t come easy in Washington, where deal makers and favor seekers prefer to work from the shadows. But the Obama administration is taking a major step into the sunlight with the presidential order to post online the thousands of White House visitors who come and go each month.

Gruel to starving children goes the saying. I previously wrote about this topic here, and while the White House policy on visitor records is a positive step, it is by no means a "major step" to establishing the system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration the President promised.

In an article recently written by Clint Hendler of the Columbia Journalism Review, Steve Aftergood says it best when he states:

there’s a sense that this is the last chance that we have for a decade—maybe for a generation—to get the classification system right.

Our citizens' expectation must be better than simply rolling back some of the most egregious abuses of the prior administration. Incremental change is "business as usual." Unless real and radical change is implemented now, future generations are assured to repeat the tragedies of the current decade, to include the needless sacrifice of American blood and treasure. We owe our children and grandchildren, and their children, much more than that.