In the White House Press Office, they appear to feel nostalgic for the days immediately following President Obama’s inauguration, when it seemed they could do no wrong.
Among the new “speeches and remarks” available at the White House website, the press office has listed “REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT IN WELCOMING SENIOR STAFF AND CABINET SECRETARIES TO THE WHITE HOUSE,” posted on November 18th, 2011.
Why welcome staffers to the place they work every day? Because, when Obama gave the speech on January 21, 2009, they were all fresh faces at new jobs.
It’s an interesting speech to read, three years later, now that Obama’s record as President has taken the lustre off his hope-and-change promises.
He opened the remarks by announcing the first executive orders of his presidency — little suspecting, it seems, that his reelection campaign strategy and economic agenda would come to rest almost exclusively on executive orders.
In order to “restore [America’s] faith in government,” Obama said, “we need to close the revolving door that lets lobbyists come into government freely, and lets them use their time in public service as a way to promote their own interests over the interests of the American people when they leave.”
True enough, but Obama then allowed at least 40 former lobbyists to man the stations in his executive branch. Obama also initiated “ban on gifts by lobbyists to anyone serving in the administration” — but then recent reports show that he has accepted hundreds of thousands of campaign dollars contributed and bundled for his reelection effort by executives at lobbying firms.
Obama froze the pay of senior White House staffers, explaining that “during this period of economic emergency, families are tightening their belts, and so should Washington.” Also true, but the gesture would have greater resonance, in retrospect, if Obama hadn’t started running annual deficits upwards of a trillion dollars. For those of you keeping score (such as the Congressional Budget Office), the last four years have seen an unprecedented $5 trillion spike in public debt over a four year period. Blame Bush for the $787 billion bailout (that Obama voted for), but the responsibility for the remaining trillions lies at Obama’s door.
Obama gave his new staff a lesson in public service. “It’s not about advancing your friends or your corporate clients,” he said. But the Solyndra scandal — in which the Department of Energy gave a loan guarantee to a solar company financed by an Obama bundler, and then restructured that loan so that the bundler would get his money back before taxpayers when the company went bankrupt — tarnishes the president’s record of not “advancing [his] friends.”
In the name of transparency, Obama proposed to reinterpret he Freedom of Information Act to make it easier to obtain public documents. “The Freedom of Information Act is perhaps the most powerful instrument we have for making our government honest and transparent, and of holding it accountable. And I expect members of my administration not simply to live up to the letter but also the spirit of this law.”
Just two years later, Obama’s Justice Department requested, in effect, the “license to lie” — the power to claim that a document requested under FOIA did not exist even when they knew the documents did exist. This answer would have effectively negated the power of FOIA, because the requesting party would not be able to sue for the documents in court if Justice had been able to claim that they did not exist.
If Obama had lived up to the promises and directives he laid out in this maiden speech to the White House staff, he might have been a great president.
