

Obama makes Bush's record public - sama
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ExecutiveOrderPresidentialRecords/
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ExecutiveOrderPresidentialRecords/
======
gruseom
_"Starting today," Mr. Obama said, "every agency and department should know
that this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold
information, but those who seek to make it known."_

I may never get over the astonishment of seeing a president who thinks like I
do.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/us/politics/22obama.html>

~~~
Prrometheus
In style, anyway. We'll see what happens when people want to look into his
affairs, or when they want a detailed accounting of the proposed $1 trillion
Obama bailout.

edit: okay, those changes have some (mostly symbolic) substance to them. But
there is not enough light in the world to illuminate all the caves in Mordor.
I am not going to bet the house on the age of secrecy being over in Washington

edit edit: This is priceless. Rules without teeth, now that is change you can
believe in!

"The Republican National Committee criticized that requirement and said the
new administration was already violating it. Mr. Obama’s nominee for deputy
secretary of defense, William Lynn, has been a lobbyist for the defense
contractor Raytheon, and his nominee for deputy secretary of health and human
services, William V. Corr, lobbied for stricter tobacco regulations as an
official with the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

A senior White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity,
conceded the two nominees did not adhere to the new rules. But he said that
Mr. Lynn had the support of Republicans and Democrats, and would receive a
waiver under the policy, and that Mr.Corr did not need a waiver because he had
agreed to recuse himself from tobacco issues.

“When you set very tough rules, you need to have a mechanism for the
occasional exception,” this official said, adding, “We wanted to be really
tough, but at the same time we didn’t want to hamstring the new administration
or turn the town upside down.”"

~~~
gruseom
No. Not just in style. A day after inauguration he has already issued
substantive decisions that are in keeping with his rhetoric (not to mention a
total repudiation of the un-American nightmare the country can hopefully now
move beyond).

Besides, Obama's style goes far beyond what politicians who are merely posing
are capable of. It indicates a cast of mind and is not so easy to fake.
Compare it to Clinton who was obviously faking, but who did it so well that
people liked him.

I don't expect that Obama can or will fix everything. But I stand by what I
said: he thinks like I do. On nearly every topic in his speech yesterday, he
said what I hoped he would say. I never imagined such a thing could happen.

Edit: by the way, though your first proposed test is pretty vague, your second
-- a detailed accounting of spending -- is one that I feel pretty confident
about. I'd be very surprised if that didn't happen, and happen in a way that
is clearly new. (Especially since Obama already championed it as a senator.)

Edit 2: people come up with all sorts of straw men. You'd have to be an idiot
to think that Obama is going to usher in a kingdom of light, or do anything
that goes against human nature. What we're talking about here is incremental
improvement. That happens to matter. If you disagree, I give you the past 8
years.

~~~
Sam_Odio
> I don't expect that Obama can or will fix everything. But I stand by what I
> said: he thinks like I do. On nearly every topic in his speech yesterday, he
> said what I hoped he would say. I never imagined such a thing could happen.

Lucky you. Not all of us are so fortunate.

~~~
gruseom
Heh. It did occur to me that it is luck, or at least the law of averages (I've
gone a long time without seeing anyone in office I could admire). Be patient,
I guess, and your turn will come :)

------
hendler
Obama is my lobbyist. He just happens to also be president.

CTO in the cabinet, open government, search for all public archives, more
online services and efficiency.

Once people taste clean water, will they drink dirty water again?

Day 2 and seems real so far.

------
martythemaniak
Except the Bush admin had the foresight to use a private email system whose
archives magically got "lost".

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_e-
mail_controv...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_e-
mail_controversy)

But hey, maybe they accidentally used the official email system for something
that might be of interest.

~~~
vaksel
weren't those emails magically found a few days ago? Not sure if I read it in
a story or someone talked about it in a comment

~~~
joe_adk
Took a while for all the magical redaction.

~~~
cmos
We'll probably never know everything..

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Connell>

[http://www.wkyc.com/news/local/news_article.aspx?storyid=103...](http://www.wkyc.com/news/local/news_article.aspx?storyid=103520)

------
indiejade
I sense that this is going to be just the beginning of an "astonishing" year
regarding what went down during the Bush years. Watergate Part II

------
ra
I am overwhelmed by the potential of this man.

Forgive my ignorance, but does anyone know the substance of Executive Order
13233?

"Sec. 6. Revocation. Executive Order 13233 of November 1, 2001, is revoked."

edit: Oh forgive my trigger happiness.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13233>

------
mynameishere
On day one...

 _“When you set very tough rules, you need to have a mechanism for the
occasional exception,”_

...they're making exceptions. Specifically, "When the President does it, it
isn't illegal.

~~~
gruseom
That is a non sequitur. We all know who stood for the latter idea, and there
is no equivalence here.

------
colinake
I think it's great that he's making records public and all, but before we
start judging his character and how he's going to govern, let's realize this
is only Day 2.

You can't summarize a man by one (extremely highly scrutinized) day of action.
In a few years we will be able to summarize the man. I for one hope it's a
good summary.

------
jonas_b
I can't wait til the day a US Pres use "Don't be evil" as motto for his
administration.

------
jpwagner
Can someone please clarify: What (of Bush's "record") can I read and where can
I read it? Depending on the content (which I am not clear on) this could
possibly be a problem for national security. Shouldn't it be something like
former-president-records-go-public-after-XX-years?

------
gojomo
And the hacker angle is...?

~~~
pg
One is that there's going to be a lot of data in there. It will turn out to be
possible to reconstruct a lot of concealed things by noticing patterns, and by
connecting indirect evidence.

More generally it represents a dramatic shift toward hacker values.

~~~
gojomo
There's a lot of data and political-systems content related to just about
every executive action. I'm not looking forward to a parade of Executive Order
text submissions from Obama fans who can squint and find a hacker angle in
anything.

On the face of it, there is one major change under the new order: a former
president can no longer unilaterally request withholding of their records
(until possibly reversed by a court order). Now, the Archivist acting with the
approval of the current President can ignore a former President's wishes.

Whether that's really a dramatic shift in practice, we'll see. (There may not
be a single record actually released by this change, if Obama and his
Archivist agree with former Presidents on any requests.) An article actually
arguing this is a dramatic pro-hacker shift would be welcome. In the meantime,
the raw Order text with a spun headline is a bad precedent.

I fully expect tenuous submissions of this type will fade with time. But the
sooner they are replaced with analytical takes -- even if on the same subjects
-- the better.

 _Editted with correction: removed "for the 12-year period" and reference to
only Bush-43 and Clinton-42 as being affected. The prior policy extended to
any former President._

~~~
jorgeortiz85

      Now, the Archivist acting with the approval of the current
      President can ignore a former President's wishes.
    

Actually, it's a bit more dramatic than that. Section 4(b) says "the Archivist
shall abide by any instructions given him by the incumbent President or his
designee unless otherwise directed by a final court order."

Under this executive order, the Archivst acts under the instruction of the
current President. That same section gives the former President 30 days notice
before his records get released. If the former President wants to assert
executive privilege (and the current President disagrees) the former President
has to get a court to help him out. This will make it fairly expensive to
assert executive privilege, but it also provides judicial oversight over
claims of executive privilege by former Presidents.

Checks and balances, baby!

~~~
gruseom
_the former President has to get a court to help him out_

How delightfully appropriate for a former President who held the rule of law
in such contempt.

------
thomasmallen
Obama may very well have entered this using FCKEditor himself. Evidence: The
title:

    
    
        <strong>Executive Order -- Presidential Records</strong>
    

Empty paragraphs and all, this looks like most article content that gets spit
out of a CMS. Of course, I have no reason to believe that it was Obama in
particular, but you never know, it _was_ his first executive order...

Also, a sign of things to come for lobbyists:

[http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ExecutiveOrder-
Et...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ExecutiveOrder-
EthicsCommitments/)

~~~
unalone
Wait, how does the title mean Obama did it directly? I'd suspect that he
drafted the order, but there's no evidence of this being anything other than a
copy.

The no-lobbyists order has been a long time coming. I'm thrilled.

~~~
vlad
Obama read it word for word to his secretary, while jogging, over his
blackberry phone. It's pretty cool news regardless.

