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President Elect Barack Obama has more to do on his first day as President of the United States of America than any other president in history, even including Franklin Delano Roosevelt coming in during the midst of the Great Depression in 1933. He will certainly need to take immediate action on the financial crisis that is unfolding before us, but there will also be much more on his plate as well. In a nutshell, he has to bring transparency, moral authority, confidence, trust, and thus Democracy back to the Oval Office, a large plate, indeed, in light of the massive erosion of these qualities that the George W. Bush Administration has incurred during the past eight years.

According to his official website, barackobama.com, President Elect Obama and his team intend to "shine light" on an array of dark corners of law and policy making as an issue of ethics, in both the executive and the legislative branches. Citing Vice President Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force, where oil and gas lobbyists met secretly to set energy policy, without the input of environmentalists, climate change scientists, or alternative energy advocates, Mr. Obama has declared his intent to take action to remove the undue influence of lobbyists as well as campaign donations on our government officials. He understands that the influence of lobbyists and campaign financing are integrally tied to the concept of transparency, and so several important steps will be taken to eliminate the secrecy that has been one of the most deeply troubling characteristics of the Bush Administration as well as in the process of lawmaking in Congress.

One important step will be to "create a centralized Internet database of lobbying reports, ethics records, and campaign finance filings." As explained on the website, this would include a "Contracts and Influence" Database, and would go hand in hand with a further listing of special interest tax breaks, ending the overuse of "no-bid contracts," instituting a five-day period of public scrutiny of all non-emergency laws that come to the president's desk to be signed, and the creation of new rules that will require legislators to disclose and justify earmarks that they add to bills 72 hours before they can be approved by the full Senate.

Under the title, "Free the Executive Branch from Special Interest Influence," on the website, three promises are made, regarding the "revolving door" that has been abused by government employees and businesses, ending the practice of hiring career appointees according to their political views, and curtailing the kind of cronyism that put Michael Brown in charge of such a vitally important agency as FEMA when he had no qualifications for the job. The website also states the intention of the new president to "Bring Americans Back into their Government" by initiating more public disclosure and citizen input of policy making and regulatory actions through the technology of the Internet.

If soon-to-be President Obama follows through on these promises, then real Democracy will begin to reverse its slide into some other kind of system that can not truly be called "government for the people, by the people." But where to begin? One of the very first things that President Obama can and should do, with a mere stroke of his Presidential Pen, will be to live up to the statement he made on May 28, 2008, as reported by Reuters,

"During a fund-raiser in Denver, Obama a former constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago Law School was asked what he hoped to accomplish during his first 100 days in office.
'I would call my attorney general in and review every single executive order issued by George Bush and overturn those laws or executive decisions that I feel violate the constitution,' said Obama."

Executive orders are by established tradition documented and made available to the public, that is, those that do not fall under the category of "National Security Directives." These are, of course, very controversial, and may well be unconstitutional, as we have seen with issues such as domestic spying and secret torture directives. The Bush administration has used these secret directives to push the limits of executive power to an unprecedented degree. But a president who is committed to following the rule of law as delineated in the Constitution itself will understand that such expansion of power damages our system of governance by creating a crisis of confidence at home and undermining our international prestige with the hypocrisy of a nation that promotes democratic principles abroad but does not live up to them in practice.

In addition to these executive orders are the more than 750 signing statements that President Bush made while signing bills into law, which the American Bar Association has concluded are unconstitutional in this important report titled, Task Force on Presidential Signing Statements and the Separation of Powers Doctrine. The report documents the history of signing statements, and concludes that their use has never been constitutional and must therefore cease. Their conclusion is that bills must either be vetoed and sent back to the Legislature, or signed as they are in full. I feel that not only should the new president cease the practice, but he should also go through all previous presidential signing statements, even to those of presidents predating George W. Bush, and either reinstate the laws as sent to the president's desk or have the laws properly rewritten by the Legislature. This will take some time and effort, but it is about time that our governing bodies took the time to straighten up the law books in order to reestablish confidence in the democratic process.

As government transparency goes hand in hand with lobbying and campaign finance reform, so too will the efforts of the legislative body gain both time and strength by such reforms. In the current system, legislators begin their efforts to raise campaign donations immediately upon being elected into office. They spend almost unbelievable amounts of time working toward their reelections. But if campaign reforms were to be instituted, limiting both the time and the amount of money that elections would require, not only would the issue of campaign donation influence be removed, but also their time available to actually carry out the tasks of creating and passing legislation would be greatly enhanced. In addition to this benefit, such limits would make sense in an economic atmosphere where currency flow is stagnating at every level. This slowdown of the flow of money through society means that campaigns must also adjust to this circumstance, and mandating public financing would thus take great stress off of politicians and allow the money that would have been put aside for political action by businesses and interest groups to become available for other more immediate purposes.

An open government is a democratic government, a confidence-inspiring government, a participatory government, a trustworthy government, and a thoughtful government. By shining the light on as many processes as possible, more waste and incompetency can be discerned, and more real and meaningful work can be completed. And by allowing more democratic processes to be carried out, our nation will become safer and sounder, as the example that we set on the world stage of true interest in the fate of the people who make the government work will inspire admiration instead of fear and distrust of our international intentions. Then the power of peaceful change through real democracy will come blaring out of Washington, and the illusion that violence can bring meaningful change will be shattered by the ever brighter shining light on the hill.

Learn more about this author, Julie R Butler.
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