An Open Government

The joy on the National Mall and across the world was justified. The wars will not end tomorrow and our economy will not right itself over night but something more important is happening: we, the people, get our government back.

Secrecy is designed to make self-government impossible and we have just lived through an age of secrecy.

That age is now over. Openness is at the center of President Obama’s style and the way he is governing. This is a stunning change.

The secrecy began eight years ago with Vice President Cheney’s energy task force and subsequent policies. We never knew who was writing the rules or what the rules were. We drifted from a government of, by and for the people to a Star Chamber-like government of secret kidnappings and secret imprisonments. That secrecy was instigated not to protect national security but to keep us from governing ourselves.

Obama, on the other hand, has set up a series of public task forces chaired by Cabinet officers: on Middle-Class Working Families, on Detainee Disposition and on Interrogation and Transfer Policies.

Obama’s openness, outreach, transparency or whatever you want to call his inclusiveness in action and purpose, extends from family and neighbors to friends and foe alike and even to the city of Washington and to the world.

Even before the inauguration, President Obama made it clear that he personally, and his government, will not be a captive in the White House. He goes out to where the people mingle.

Some of it is just Obama having fun as when he went with Michelle to Bobby Van’s steakhouse, when he showed up at Senator Dick Durbin’s party at the Equinox restaurant or when he went with the DC Mayor to Ben’s Chili Bowl for a half smoke sausage. Obama said he intended to be a friend to the city. The mayor and the local restaurant industry consider him such already.

Obama has thrown the White House open in an almost Jacksonian fashion; cocktail parties rather than tapping a barrel of whiskey. . He invited Republicans and Democrats to the White House for a Super Bowl watching party

He is having his extended family come to his home. He has that tight community of family and friends where Barak was at first, Michelle’s husband. They plan for regular monthly get-togethers in the White House to keep the Obama’s from being isolated. We as a nation are about to learn to appreciate the strength and power of the black family which is going to be on full view.

Obama is also reaching out to the world and those who might oppose him. His first interview as head of state was with Al Arabiya , an Arabic news agency. He reached out to the Arabs, the group with whom we have the most serious misunderstandings

Then he went to the group with the next most serious misunderstandings, the Congressional Republicans. It matters little that none of them thereafter voted for the current version of his stimulus package. The point was a civil discourse where he explained his line of reasoning and he listened to theirs.

His trip to the Republicans was more than symbol and he will continue to reach out as he and they get past the acrimony and partisanship we have all endured.

The substance is there to back up these symbols. Attorney General Ashcroft said: “When you carefully consider FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] requests and decide to withhold records, in whole or in part, you can be assured that the Department of Justice will defend your decisions.” Obama’s response is a bit more open: “The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails.”

Other fruits of this change in style are already apparent. His cabinet may not be a “team of rivals” but it will contain: the hold over Robert Gates at Defense, and Republicans Ray LaHood at Transportation and Senator Judd Gregg at Commerce.

This openness promises a more Lincolnesque government. But one that we can be part of because we know what it is doing and we can relate that to our own aspirations.