In his 2008 campaign for the Presidency, then-candidate Barack Obama promised that his presidency would be the most transparent White House in history. Flush with confidence, Mr. Obama made plenty of promises that haven't been borne out by subsequent events.
Recently, Ben Rhodes, the Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications, said in an interview that the White House created an "echo chamber" that eventually misled journalists about the timeline regarding the negotiations with Iran over the much-maligned nuclear deal. That the Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications felt the need to deceive the American public is astounding. That the White House went along with it is almost criminal.
But we really shouldn't be surprised. Since gaining the White House, Mr. Obama's administration has been repeatedly lied to and misled the American public, all while touting itself as the most transparent administration in history.
Obamacare is starting to unravel. Passed without a full investigation by the Congress -- Nancy Pelosi defended its questionable passage by declaring that We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what's in it -- the ramifications are only now starting to be understood. Jonathan Gruber, one of the architects of Obamacare who -- depending on which administration flack is talking -- either did or didn't work with the White House to design the colossal mess, was caught on camera stating that it was the stupidity of the American public that should be credited with its passage. President Obama himself was quoted dozens of times declaring that one could keep his doctor, or his plan, when in fact very little of that proved to be true.
Benghazi is another example. Despite knowing that there was no spontaneous uprising that led to the murder of four Americans, the administration hewed to its line that a movie critical of the prophet Mohammed sparked the demonstration when in fact it was well-known that this was an Al Qaeda inspired attack that was forecast beforehand. Yet rather than level with the American public, the administration continued to peddle the story that some poor schmuck of a filmmaker was responsible for the incident. They sent out their piñata Susan Rice to serve up the pablum to an adoring media and, even more insultingly, it continues to stick to its story that it didn't know before or at the time of the attack.
The IRS scandal is slowly and quietly unfolding in Cincinnati. There, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has directed the IRS to release documents it was withholding while hiding behind 26 U.S.C. §6103. Citing that statute, the IRS has claimed it cannot turn over documents that courts have directed it to turn over because the agency is forbidden from releasing information gleaned from returns. The only problem with that tale is that the information sought comes from applications for section 501(1)(c)(3) status, not returns. In March, the Sixth Circuit directed the IRS to turn over the requested information post haste. It remains to be seen whether the documents will be released on time.
Cankles used a home brew server and swears up and down that she never received any classified material there. This ludicrous claim is repeated by her fawning press organ and the Obama administration despite the fact that the FBI is investigating her and reports have already surfaced that a couple of thousand emails contained classified information. That this information was readily available to anyone capable of hacking the decidedly un-NSA hardware and software that Cankles was using is actionable under any number of criminal statutes, but still she, her unofficial press organ and the administration refuse to admit that there was anything wrong in what she did.
The Clinton Global Initiative, or CGI, is probably violating any number of tax laws, the money donated for charitable causes being used by Slick Willy and Cankles. But believe them when they tell you that there is no monkey business at CGI...even when Cankles' State Department bent the rules so her hubby and his cronies could profit from regimes that violate our most basic principles.
And now Mr. Rhodes. Mind you, he's already got a defense shield: His brother is the head of the CBS News Division. I can't wait to see how much scrutiny this story gets there. But Mr. Obama is already citing executive privilege to deny Congress the right to interrogate Mr. Rhodes. So much for transparency.
Back in 2008, Christopher Beam at Slate wrote an article about the promise of transparency and closed with this paragraph:
Is there such a thing as too much information? Yes—but only if there's no way of processing it. The key to increasing transparency, therefore, is to allow people to interpret what they're seeing. That means not just more documents but better databases, more navigable interfaces, and more visual aids to help people analyze information. If you've got that, there's no such thing as over-sharing.
The key to that analysis is in the second line: The key to increasing transparency, therefore, is to allow people to interpret what they're seeing. I'm sure Mr. Beam didn't anticipate this, but what the Obama administration has done in its much vaunted transparency campaign is limit what it allows the American public to see. Controlling the message, after all, allows for better manipulation of the content.
Americans of all political stripes should be horrified. Democrats and those who supported Mr. Obama should be outraged and feel betrayed at what he and his minions have done to them and the rest of the country.
It will be years until historians have the proper perspective and the amount of documentation necessary to render a proper verdict on Mr. Obama's brand of transparency. In the meantime we're left to count the number of days left in his sorry administration and to hope that Cankles doesn't get in so Groundhog Day doesn't occur.
(c) 2016 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles
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