Chicago Republicans

President Barack Obama made a number of promises during his campaign, and there was one I remember catching my ear. In fact, I almost believed he would actually do it, but only because it would be so easy to do. I am referring to his promise to post all non-emergency bills for review and comment on WhiteHouse.gov for five days prior to signing said legislation. This is one of those transparency gimicks that candidates like to throw out during campaigns because they sound so democratic; still, it's not a terrible idea.

Once you weed out the over-zealous lawyers and want-to-be legislators, there could be a real review process. There is a chance that President Obama may have honestly liked this idea, but there is little doubt that the Nancy Pelosis and Harry Reids of this world would oppose it. Just imagine a Pelosi written bill publicly scrutinized line by line by the likes of Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh for five days between conference and signing. Imagine the embarrassment of earmark recipients on both sides of the aisle and the pressure that ordinary citizens could put on the President to sign or not sign a bill as it is written.

And even though it would produce a great deal of dog and pony show activity, it could have silenced the critics of AIG or prevented the whole disaster to begin with. Maybe somebody would have noticed the supposed error, maybe a lawyer, a former legislator, or any ordinary citizen. Or maybe it would have gone unnoticed, and there would be even more of us to share the blame.

 Back to reality.

This is all just another unfulfilled promise for the President, who nine days after inaguration signed  legislation without first posting it for five days. Since then, he has signed ten more bills into law without public scrutiny. Only once has a bill been posted for five days, but it was posted after passing Congress, not after being presented to the President (that means it wasnt the final version). Of course, he gave himself a nice out by referring only to "non-emergency" bills, and perhaps one could argue that he has only signed emergency legislation. Even so, he has held on to two bills for more than five days without signing them, and posted neither online. If they were such great emergencies, why did he hold them so long? How about the Recovery Act? That one sat on his desk for three days while he glad-handed in Chicago for the weekend. It must have been a real emergency.

In the big picture, this particular broken promise seems pretty insignificant, but this is a man who promised to be the most transparent President ever. It turns out that he is unable or unwilling to make even the smallest steps towards the grandest goals (that's right, a Chicago politician cited transparency as a lofty goal). It doesn't exactly inspire confidence in his ability to perform the more integral parts of his job that require more than an administrative assistant to scan and upload a document to a website.