While North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue pulls on the mantle of the transparency governor, on the national level the Obama administration is heading in the opposite direction:
Carol Browner, former Clinton administration EPA head and current Obama White House climate czar, instructed auto industry execs “to put nothing in writing, ever” regarding secret negotiations she orchestrated regarding a deal to increase federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards.
That approach puts Barack Obama into the company of the late Gov. George C. Wallace of Alabama, whose finance director had a little sampler on his wall, right next to a portrait of Gen. Stonewall Jackson, that read, “If it ain’t on paper, it doesn’t exist.” The ambiguity of the homily was helpful. If pressed, he could just claim that he was advocating putting everything on paper, but the track record of the Wallace administration belied that claim.
The Obama administration, though, isn’t even clever enough to use the cover of ambiguity.
