Transparency – Better Than Bipartisanship

ProPublica, “an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest," reports that revised agenda pages have been posted on President-elect Obama's transition website, Change.gov. An excerpt from the technology page:

Create a Transparent and Connected Democracy

• Open Up Government to its Citizens: Use cutting-edge technologies to create a new level of transparency, accountability, and participation for America's citizens.

• Bring Government into the 21st Century: Use technology to reform government and improve the exchange of information between the federal government and citizens while ensuring the security of our networks. Appoint the nation's first Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to ensure the safety of our networks and lead an interagency effort, working with chief technology and chief information officers of each of the federal agencies, to ensure that they use best-in-class technologies and share best practices.

I believe that a commitment to transparency, accountability, and participation is more important than a pledge of bipartisanship. Will that be enough to temper the premature criticism from those on the left and right political fringes? Will citizens respond to this opportunity to help remake good government?

Can We Vote Already?

I just scanned the news headlines on several sites. The ad infinitum presidential campaign has become ad nauseam. Television and radio are worse. Barack Obama might be progressive, but the Republican campaign ads here in Western Pennsylvania are definitively regressive:

Obama is a socialist … palling around with terrorists … unethical … who will raise taxes on the middle class.

If Sen. Obama responds directly to these accusations, I fully expect the McCain camp to break out in a chorus of I'm rubber, you're glue. Everything you say bounces off of me and sticks to you.

Update, a day late: I'm concerned that regressive Republican tactics might garner Sen. McCain some votes at the cost of widening the polarization of the citizenry. On Wednesday, Glenn Greenwald noted that recent attacks by right-wing politicians have fallen flat, leaving the perpetrators to backtrack or apologize “for insulting liberals or impugning their patriotism."

Greenwald closes on this hopeful note:

We're gradually seeing not only the demise of the right-wing faction that has dominated the Republican Party for decades, but also the death of their ugliest and most toxic tactics. When numerous right-wing figures crawl across one's television set desperately denying and abjectly apologizing for attacks on the patriotism of Democrats and liberals, that is potent evidence that, at least as a matter of political rhetoric, a genuine sea-change is taking place.

Senator McCain Requests Debate Delay

"A stage, an audience, a moderator, and at least one presidential candidate."
Robert Gibbs, Obama campaign spokesman, quoted in The Washington Post, on what to expect at Friday's scheduled debate.

Senator John McCain, who has missed voting on 412 bills in the current session of the Senate, wants to delay Friday's presidential debate and meet, along with Senator Obama, with leaders of both Houses of Congress to work on a solution to the financial crisis. Among the 64.1% of floor votes Sen. McCain missed were the F.I.S.A. Amendments Act, 2 energy development funding amendments, and a bill to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as increase education benefits for certain veterans who served after September 11, 2001 (G.I. Bill).

Senator Barack Obama, who missed 295 votes, many of them during a prolonged primary contest with Sen. Hillary Clinton, has rejected the proposal to delay the debate.

The Trail, A Daily Diary of Campaign 2008 in The Washington Post also reports that the Commission on Presidential Debates said that it is "moving forward with its plan for the first presidential debate at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, MS, this Friday, September 26," despite the McCain announcement. "We believe the public will be well served by having all of the debates go forward as scheduled," the Commission said.


Update: Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic reports that "A senior (McCain) campaign official says that McCain will NOT debate -- no matter what -- if Congress hasn't reached an agreement on a bailout package."

Chris Cillizza opines in The Washington Post that "The move is an obvious attempt by McCain and his campaign to paint the Arizona senator as above politics, willing to put aside his campaign for the good of the country."