When It Comes To Questionable Washington Practices, President Has Reversed Himself

When it comes to transparency and credibility, the administration seems to be in increasing trouble.

(WASHINGTON, DC) - President Barack Obama won election, at least in part, by promising to change Washington.  He said repeatedly that he would stop the revolving door and not hire lobbyists in his administration. At a 2007 campaign event in Nevada, for example, Mr. Obama declared: "I'm in this race to tell the lobbyists in Washington that their days of setting the agenda are over. They will not work in my White House."

When he took office, Mr. Obama signed an executive order forbidding lobbyists from working in the executive branch and restructuring revolving-door and gift policies.  The reality has been quite different.  The fact-checking website Politifact.com said the administration has made extensive use of waivers allowing former lobbyists to serve.

According to the website, "The waivers are granted by the Obama administration itself, and are little more than the administration saying a former lobbyist is OK.  For a candidate who pledged to conduct business out in the open, there is little transparency about when a waiver is required."

Now, the president has named John Podesta, a revolving-door lobbyist, although not at the moment, if ever there was one to be White House chief of staff.

John Podesta and his brother Tony were Democratic staff members in the U.S. Senate in the 1980s. In 1988, they left those jobs and started a lobbying firm. Podesta Associates' early corporate clients included drug giant Merck and computer manufacturer Digital Equipment Corporation, later acquired by Compaq, which merged with Hewlett-Packard. The Podesta brothers also won contracts to do opposition research on Republicans.

Podesta's brother Tony still runs a prominent Washington lobbying firm. The firm has been doing very well since President Obama took office. According to information from the Center for Responsive Politics, the firm's income went from more than $10 million in 2007 to almost $30 million by 2010. The Podesta Group is retained by businesses that have a great deal to gain from favorable government policy, including BP, Wal-Mart, Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

When it comes to transparency and credibility, the administration seems to be in increasing trouble. In an article in THE NEW YORK TIMES with the headline,"Obama's Orwellian Image Control," Santiago Lyon, a longtime photojournalist who is Vice President and director of photography at The Associated Press, writes: "Manifestly undemocratic...is the way Mr. Obama's administration----in hypocritical defiance of the principles of openness and transparency he campaigned on---has systematically tried to bypass the media by releasing a sanitized visual record of his activities through official photographs and videos, at the expense of independent journalistic access."

Mr. Lyon reports that, "The White House-based press corps was prohibited from photographing Mr. Obama on his first day at work in January 2009. Instead, a set of carefully vetted images was released. Since then the press has been allowed to photograph him alone in the Oval Office only twice: in 2009 and in 2010, both times when he was speaking on the phone. Pictures of him at work...activities to which previous administrations routinely granted access---have never been allowed. Instead...an event involving the president discharging his official duties is arbitrarily labeled 'private,' with media access prohibited. A little while later an official photo is released...Information-savvy citizens...would be wise to treat those handout photos for what they are: propaganda."

If we cannot believe the pictures the White House releases, the same seems to be true of some of what the president has told us. Even those who ordinarily support the president and his policies have expressed dismay. Recently, comedian Jon Stewart showed a series of video clips on The Daily Show of the president, on many separate occasions, repeating his statement that if you like your healthcare plan you can keep it. "So, yes," said Stewart, "the president was somewhat dishonest about the promise of his health care program."

Early in December, White House officials abruptly changed their story about whether President Obama had ever met his father's half brother, a Boston man who faced deportation to Kenya after a drunken-driving arrest in 2011. Two years ago, the White House told THE BOSTON GLOBE that the president had never met Onyango Obama. Now press secretary Jay Carney says that statement was false and that, in fact, the two men lived together briefly while the president was a student at Harvard. White House officials explained the abrupt change in the story by saying that no one asked the president in 2011 whether he knew his uncle. Instead, said Carney, they had simply relied upon the president's own books and the public record to determine they had never met.

President Obama, as he campaigned for the presidency, promised something new in Washington---transparency, truthfulness, an end to the revolving door of lobbyists and government officials. What we have, however, is business as usual. After the Bush administration took us to war in Iraq because of "weapons of mass destruction" which didn't exist, Americans hoped for a president they could trust and rely upon. In this,they have been let down. And as the public's distrust of government----and of politicians of both parties----grows, business as usual is taking us on a downward spiral we can ill afford.

Salem-News.com contributor Allan C. Brownfeld received his B.A. degree from the College of William and Mary, his J.D. degree from the Marshall-Wythe School of Law of the College of William and Mary and his M.A. in Government and Politics from the University of Maryland. He has served on the faculties of St. Stephen's Episcopal School, Alexandria, Virginia, and the University College of the University of Maryland.

The recipient of a Wall Street Journal Foundation Award, Mr. Brownfeld has written for such newspapers as THE HOUSTON PRESS, THE RICHMOND TIMES DISPATCH, THE WASHINGTON EVENING STAR and THE CINCINNATI ENQUIRER. For many years he wrote three columns a week for such newspapers as THE PHOENIX GAZETTE, THE MANCHESTER UNION LEADER, and THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER. His weekly column appeared for more than a decade in ROLL CALL, the newspaper of Capitol Hill. His articles have appeared in such journals as THE YALE REVIEW, THE TEXAS QUARTERLY, THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, ORBIS and MODERN AGE.

Mr. Brownfeld served as a member of the staff of the U.S. Senate Internal Security Subcommittee and was the author of that committee's 250-page study of the New Left. He has also served as Assistant to the Research Director of the House Republican Conference and as a consultant to such members of Congress as Reps. Phil Crane (R-Il) and Jack Kemp (R-NY) and to the Vice President of the United States.

He is a former editor of THE NEW GUARD and PRIVATE PRACTICE, the journal of the Congress of County Medical Societies and has served as a Contributing Editor AMERICA'S FUTURE and HUMAN EVENTS. He served as Washington correspondent for the London-based publications, JANE'S ISLAMIC AFFAIRS ANALYST and JANE'S TERRORISM REPORT. His articles regularly appear in newspapers and magazines in England, South Africa, Sweden, the Netherlands and other countries. You can write to Allan at abrownfeld@gmail.com