Great article on Obama's "Fake Transparency"

The Obama transition team has announced its plans to release on the Internet a weekly video address in which soon-to-be President Obama will communicate directly to we citizens. In a press release, it claims that this will, in effect, "make the White House and the political process more transparent."

Not so, says Slate's political reporter and columnist John Dickerson, who points out that "snazzy new technology" alone won't be "enough to bring transparency to the White House." His tough but fair-minded (by which I mean, of course, soberly pro-Obama...) assessment of things seems fairly dead-on-the-money:

During the campaign Obama was transparent—but only up to a point. Unlike previous candidates, he released the names of fundraisers who raised big chunks of bundled donations, a move not required by law. But he stopped short of declaring the precise amounts and affiliations. When it came to releasing the names of his small-dollar donors, his campaign used technology as an excuse rather than as a tool to increase transparency. One of the big acts of technological transparency during his campaign was inadvertent, when it was discovered that his Web site language had been changed to remove criticism of the troop surge in Iraq.

Personally, Obama has grown more opaque about his thoughts. As a journalist I get vertigo thinking about how great it would be to hear Obama talk as openly and honestly about his views as he did in this 2004 interview about his religion that was released this week. That he no longer talks this freely is undoubtedly part of the reason he won. I don't see any sign that he's going to change his behavior, and I'm not sure he should. If the press is going to sound-bite a president to death, why should he open up too much?

Obama will show he is transparent not by delivering his message in some new way but by conveying actual information. He's got to tell the truth, yes, but he's also got to have something to say. His most powerful statements during the campaign were not conveyed through an Ethernet cable but from a stage, alone, with a microphone, the way it has been done for 100 years. If the promise of transparency and candor never arrives but the hype continues, his campaign will have produced the political equivalent of vaporware.