White House press secretary defends Obama on transparency
On the issue of government transparency, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest publicly lamented that President Obama is not getting enough credit.
Writing to the editor in Wednesday’s New York Times, Earnest criticized a recent Times story about lack of transparency in the Clinton and Trump campaigns. He took issue with Jim Rutenberg’s piece for failing to acknowledge “the important and unprecedented steps” taken by the Obama administration, “to fulfill the president’s promise to lead the most transparent White House in history.”
As an example of this administration’s transparency, Earnest cited the online database of more than 5.5-million names of visitors to the White House, as well as “mind-boggling amounts of data” available online at Data.gov.
Further, he asserted that “as a matter of policy,” Mr. Obama “invites” White House press to cover his formal remarks at fundraisers, “even when they are held in a private home.” Earnest said previous presidents only granted “intermittent access to such events.”
That’s true, but Earnest glossed over the fact that press access to fundraisers attended by Mr. Obama is also intermittent.
By my count, of the 60 political fundraisers Mr. Obama has done so far this election cycle, 29 were closed to press coverage. And at those events at which some press was allowed in, reporters were escorted out before Mr. Obama engaged in Q&A sessions with donors.
Mr. Obama’s commitment to transparency has also been limited on other issues.
The Obama White House has repeatedly refused requests by CBS News for an official list of all the legislation signed into law by Autopen, and not by the president’s hand, as required by the Constitution.
The Obama White House has also denied requests for a detailed accounting of the costs of presidential political travel and how much of it is reimbursed to the government.
On Tuesday, Earnest told reporters not to expect that Mr. Obama would make his private schedules public before leaving office. This came after the Associated Press reported about Hillary Clinton’s schedules as secretary of state, which were released to the AP after it filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
Earnest said Mr. Obama’s private schedules would be made public in accordance with the Presidential Records Act.
That means they would be available in response to a FOIA request five years after Mr. Obama leaves office. But a former president can delay disclosure further up to 12 years.
Again Wednesday, Earnest, while discussing his letter to the editor on Air Force One, Earnest reiterated his assertion that the Obama administration is “the most transparent in history.”
He spoke of the importance of “holding people in power accountable,” but offered his observation that there’s not a large constituency in the American electorate for the issue of government transparency.
At the same time, he added that it doesn’t mean the press should stop pushing for access to government information and data.
“The president does believe that all of you should make transparency an issue,” Earnest told reporters.
Nevertheless, it’s clear that this administration’s record on transparency is best judged not by what it wants to disclose, but by the disclosures it makes on material it would rather keep to itself.
