A lot of Barack Obama's presidential campaign was concerned with transparency in government. Indeed the campaign websites made no bones when it said "“Too often bills are rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them . . . as president, Obama will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days.”
According to Politico 44, the President has a bill-signing scheduled this coming Wednesday, though there has yet to be a House vote. To the author at Politico, this means he's broken his campaign promise. What I'm puzzled by is the lack of dialogue, on either side of the table, concerning who decides, and how it is decided, what constitutes emergency versus non-emergency bills. Is it at the President's discretion? Does he get advised by a panel we've yet to hear of? Or will he simply sign things and gauge America's reaction? Can there even BE an issue we can, in our current situation, classify as a "non-emergency?" Are not all the crises that surround us today really just one large complex crisis?
Mr. Obama is in a pretty tight spot. He is one of the rare individuals who has come to power at the edge of what will likely be a total paradigm shift for this culture. As is often the case, such a shift has brought us to all but the brink of collapse, and our president finds himself in the unenviable position of having to balance a need for immediate implementation of the changes he harped on for so long during his campaign with the transparency and accountability he seemed as dedicated to on the very same campaign.
Feb 9, 2009
The Edge of a Knife
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