Staying Clean in a Dirty War

The heart sinks at the ongoing struggle of a President who exalts American decency trying to maintain it in fighting enemies imbued with the holiness of a cause that sanctions any and all abuses of human beings.

The inner conflict is crystallized in his decision today to resist court-ordered release of photographs showing alleged torture of Mideast detainees following a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Publication, he says, would be of no benefit to investigations being carried out and could put future inquiries at risk:"In fact, the most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger."

Today's decision, a reversal of his previous stand, inspires ACLU condemnation: “The Obama administration’s adoption of the stonewalling tactics and opaque policies of the Bush administration flies in the face of the president’s stated desire to restore the rule of law, to revive our moral standing in the world and to lead a transparent government."

Those of us grateful for the contrast of Barack Obama with George W. Bush may be forgiven for not subscribing to this rhetoric. Transparency is an ideal to be ardently pursued, but it can't include exposing everything we've ever done in a dirty war to public view.

Isn't it enough that that Obama has definitively ordered an end to such behavior? Can't we express our sorrow at past wrongs without inflaming an Arab world that won't make fine distinctions between then and now? Just as we can't bring back the dead from a misbegotten war in Iraq, isn't the best way to honor them not to repeat the mistakes that took their lives?

There is a line between transparency and self-righteous breast-beating, and we're lucky to have a president who keeps trying to find it.

Scenes From a Spending Spree

The House stimulus bill recalls those old TV game shows with contestants racing the clock to fill shopping carts, items spilling into the aisles in a mad dash to the checkout counter.

In the House, $200 million to re-sod the National Mall and $200 million to extend Medicare to cover family planning services fell out yesterday as Democrats keep ransacking the shelves from what the livid Wall Street Journal calls their "40-year wish list."

Is this the only way to revive a sinking economy--to rush through 647 pages of $825 billion in scattershot spending? The President talks about transparency and accountability, but it's hard to see those elements in a grab bag of what he himself has denounced as "throwing money" at the economy.

The funds for infrastructure are beyond dispute but make up only a small fraction of the whole.

“They keep comparing this to Eisenhower, but he proposed a $500 billion highway system, and they’re going to put $30 billion” in roads and bridges, says the ranking member of the House Transportation Committee. “How farcical can you be? Give me a break.”

After eight years of Bush inaction and deadlock, the exhilaration of rapid movement is understandable, but does everything have to be done at once?

If Democrats have to give up on bipartisanship, as seems inevitable, they should be thinking twice about ramming through a bill with booby traps that are sure to explode in their faces and undermine long-term fixes for the economy.

By all means, start the flow of defensible government spending, provide loans for hard-pressed states and municipalities, and strong-arm the banks into using bailout money for lending, but can't we slow down the drunken-sailor act? The hangover could be painful in the extreme.

Trillion-Dollar Hard Times

In the run-up to what had better be the most inspiring inaugural address ever, Barack Obama keeps breaking bad news about the economy, yesterday warning of "trillion-dollar deficits for years to come."

(Today the Congressional Budget Office upped the ante by estimating a $1.2 trillion shortfall for 2009.)

During his "media availability" yesterday, the President-Elect continued his running commentary on the evolution of the stimulus package he will present to Congress, disclosing it will be free of earmarks, thereby subsuming all of John McCain's economic policy during the campaign into a throwaway line.

Even before he takes the oath, Obama is bringing what Peggy Noonan calls the "bright promise" of "a certain freshness to the proceedings in Washington" by confiding in the American people about what he is learning and how he is going about becoming The Decider. We have traded in the Wizard of Oz for an FDR-like president of fireside chats.

That the news is all terrifying up to now only underscores the need for the new transparency. The subtext of our situation is a fight against panic, and Obama seems to understand that what would feed fears most is keeping us in the dark.

So keep bringing on the trillion-dollar bad news and talk to us about it like grownups. It may not keep us from wanting to hide under the covers, but it's comforting to know that our new president won't be there with us.

Salad Dressing Secrets and Our Own

Sometimes American culture looks like one of those circus riders straddling two horses pulling in different directions.

Today’s equestrianism is about individuality. Under one foot is the report that a New York restaurateur is suing a former employee for theft of intellectual property by copying elements of her establishment from the décor to the menu.

Going in another direction is Thomas Friedman’s New York Times column titled “The Whole World Is Watching,” which says:

“When everyone has a blog, a MySpace page or Facebook entry, everyone is a publisher. When everyone has a cellphone with a camera in it, everyone is a paparazzo. When everyone can upload video on YouTube, everyone is filmmaker. When everyone is a publisher, paparazzo or filmmaker, everyone else is a public figure. We’re all public figures now. The blogosphere has made the global discussion so much richer--and each of us so much more transparent.”

There are echoes here of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World where “everybody belongs to everybody else,” and you don’t have to be Ayn Rand to find some of the implications troubling, even while cheering on the kind of open society that people like Dick Cheney hate.

Chef Rebecca Charles will likely not have much luck with legal remedies for claims about appropriation of her recipe for Caesar Salad dressing and touches like little packets of oyster crackers at each place setting, but her sense of feeling violated is understandable.

We may not live in a Brave New World--yet--but it makes sense to be thinking about where all this transparency is taking us while we can still rein in the horses.