Honest Obama?

It would be nice to see Obama acclimate the public to an open, candid, and self-aware administration. We’ve endured 8 years of a Bush White House, in which statements from the campaign and from the office of the President have been indistinguishable—from the blind, calculated optimism (“the Surge is working” or the infamous “Mission Accomplished” banner) to the absurd nomenclature (PATRIOT Act, the "Axis of Evil" and No Child Left Behind), to the incessant stonewalling and equivocations that have followed every public query to the Administration. I, and I’m sure most people, instinctively ignore whatever comes from Bush or the White House— because I know it is carefully messaged spin.

So it will be interesting to see if Obama’s popularity will be enough for him to be frank with the public. Perhaps, after 8 years of platitudes and prevarication, the public will be refreshed by a President whom they know is working for them, and is willing to be brutally honest. I guess you could call it Straight Talk. Perhaps I’m just drunk with the thrill of Obama’s victory, but I do think he is driven by conscience and a cerebral sense of duty. That’s what makes him so remarkable. So I would not be surprised if he saw honesty, candour, and transparency in his administration as one of those duties.