Double G Goes Double Barrel

Nobody on the left does righteous indignation like Glenn Greenwald. When he latches on to The Stupid, he doesn't let go. Ever. Today's poor schmuck in his jaws is former Clinton OMB official Matt Miller, who rightfully gets both barrels.

Matt Miller, a Senior Fellow with the Center for American Progress (CAP) and former official in the Clinton OMB, has an Op-Ed in The Washington Post decrying the "kiss-and-tell" books written by top presidential aides once they leave the White House, and he singles out as examples the "tell-all" books written by George Stephanopoulos and Scott McClellan (whose name is repeatedly misspelled throughout the Op-Ed). Miller doesn't merely want former officials who write such books to be stigmatized and scorned, though he does want that. Far beyond mere disapproval, he actually wants to vest presidents -- or at least the new President -- with the formal legal power to block publication of these books in the first place:

Just as mergers and marriages that flourished on handshakes and vows had to turn to coarser arrangements once the stakes of break-up became high, the politician-aide relationship now needs its contract. In other words, it is time for the political prenuptial. Barack Obama should simply require key advisers and officials to sign a binding contract of confidentiality as a condition of employment. Aides should pledge not to disclose anything they see until, say, five years after their boss leaves office.

That is an atrocious idea. For one thing, it's hard to see how enforcement of these silencing contracts could be permitted in light of the First Amendment. And I doubt that Obama, for appearance reasons if nothing else, would take this proposal seriously. But those matters aside, the thinking behind this proposal is common among Beltway insiders and reveals much about the ways of Washington.

The attribute that defines Beltway culture as much as anything else is obsessive, gratuitous secrecy. The vast bulk of what takes place of any consequence occurs away from the public eye. Even laws which Congress enacts are proposed, negotiated and written behind closed doors with lobbyists and operatives. By the time these bills are even known to the public, let alone openly "debated," their outcome is a foregone conclusion. Floor "debates" and Congressional votes are pure theater, empty rituals with no purpose other than to ratify pre-ordained outcomes that were determined in secret.

Presidents in particular already possess a vast arsenal of weapons to prevent transparency, from the virtually unfettered power to classify to borderline-omnipotent investigation-quashing tools such as the state secrets and executive privileges. As Radley Balko detailed in his recent article urging the Obama administration to renounce claims of executive privilege except where genuine national security secrets are jeopardized by disclosures, these powers have grown so rapidly over the last decade that Presidents can now maintain an almost impenetrable wall of secrecy around virtually everything they do. CAP's own blog, ThinkProgress, just recently cited a report documenting "that by almost every measure, government secrecy is rising."

As always, Double G is a good read, and of course he has a good point here. Obama is breaking down that wall of secrecy, as is VP-elect Joe Biden. There's no way the opposite would be acceptable after eight years of Preznitman From Preznitland.