Open Up, Dammit!
By Ned Resnikoff - Nov 10th, 2008 at 10:00 amOver at his New Yorker blog, George Packer makes a great point — if the Obama presidency is anything like the Obama campaign, then it’s going to be hard for the press to get much access. The lack of access is oddly reminiscent of the previous administration.
Packer says:
It was worse than a simple breakdown of trust. The problem with strategic communications is that the White House that lives by it slowly becomes incapable of dealing with reality. When bad news comes, the impulse is to deny it, and that impulse turns into a mental habit. Eventually, those in power are the last to figure out the truth (in this sense, Katrina was a direct result of the kind of mentality that had already led to disaster in Iraq). The Administration can’t answer the arguments of its critics because it has long since stopped listening to them. It finds itself increasingly isolated, not just from potential supporters, but from the truth.
Now, Obama’s been great about openness in certain ways. His supporter outreach has definitely been great, and so was the idea behind Change.gov. But the president can’t be allowed to constantly define the terms for access to information. There need to be more press conferences, more access to administration officials, and far fewer scripted, canned exchanges than in the Bush administration.
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