Obama orders lobbying cleanup, open info, end of Gitmo

WASHINGTON, Jan. 22 (UPI) -- U.S. President Barack Obama hit the ground running with his first wave of executive orders, and the message he sent with them was crystal clear: It is time to clean up the mounting corruption and cynicism of federal politics and policymaking in Washington.

In a blizzard of executive orders and memoranda, the new president of the United States ordered the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay closed within exactly one year, by Jan. 22, 2010. He banned the use of torture, ordering strict adherence to the U.S. Army Field Manual in the conducting of interrogations. He ordered the closing of CIA detention centers for terrorist suspects around the world. He went further than any previous president in mandating the release of documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act.

Obama also ordered far more transparency and far tighter standards on the way lobbying is carried out in Washington. He banned any member of his administration from accepting any lobbying job while the administration is still in power. He banned any member of his administration from accepting any gifts at all from lobbyists. He banned all administration appointees from being able to work on policy issues that could affect their former bosses or clients for a minimum of two years.

Not since the first days of President Jimmy Carter in 1977 has any president concentrated so clearly on cleaning up government and restoring the transparency of its processes to the American people -- an issue that greatly concerned the Founding Fathers and the authors of the Federalist Papers.

The concept of public service for decades has been a sick joke in Washington, and the emptiness with which the phrase is routinely touted, devalued and in practice despised has long been a bipartisan practice of Republicans and Democrats alike. The cozy, inside-the-beltway revolving-door culture through which former administration officials and congressional staffers have packed the lobbying firms prospering on K Street has continued under Democratic President Bill Clinton and Republican President George W. Bush alike. The culture of double standards, hypocrisy and naked greed has not been the monopoly of either liberals or conservatives -- it has embodied the entire baby boom and Generation X culture of the American capital.

Obama made it clear Wednesday he wants that to change. His first executive orders presented a focus on the new approach to government. Obama is determined, as he made clear in his inaugural address, to revive the concept of public service as the core of government work. His order of a pay freeze for senior White House staffers was a clarion call for top officials to set an example.

This move and the emphasis on transparency and public service, however, may signal the death knell of Timothy Geithner's hopes to be confirmed as Obama's first treasury secretary. The revelations that Geithner repeatedly failed to pay income taxes, even after he had been exposed and penalized for doing so, and when he clearly knew full well what he was doing, set precisely the opposite example of selfless public service.

As Obama memorably proclaimed this week, "Families are tightening their belts, and Washington should too."

In announcing his new rules on the release of government documents, Obama repeatedly used the terms "transparency," "openness" and "the rule of law." He also restricted his own ability to withhold or suppress the public release of information by ordering that the president no longer will be able to withhold documents just when he says so.

This move marks a particularly striking contrast with the way Bush and Clinton senior administration officials operated. After he left office, Clinton's second national security adviser, Sandy Berger, illegally removed and destroyed hundreds of confidential documents from the National Archives pertaining to crucial security issues. He got away with a mere $50,000 fine.

Obama is emphasizing as his basic theme the idea that the American people should know what their government is doing. It is an expression of the fundamental concept articulated by the 44th president's hero and 16th president, Abraham Lincoln, that government of the people must be by the people and for the people.

Obama has also sought to buttress the idea, in contrast to the concept of the imperial presidency that has been embraced by three Republican presidents and one Democratic president consistently over the past 28 years, that the White House instead should be "the people's house." Obama has sought to crystallize this concept in the renewed symbolism of approving the visit of lucky members of the public to be greeted by the president and first lady. This is a tradition that goes back to Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States, who threw the White House open to the public to eat the biggest cheese in the world, which he had been given by his admirers. Much of the cheese got trampled into the White House carpets and ruined them.

Obama's much noted order suspending the operation of the military tribunals that slowly and belatedly have started to try the cases of terror suspects detained at Guantanamo Bay was therefore not just the fulfillment of a specific major campaign pledge: It was also consistent with the entire pattern of his first wave of executive orders.

For all the dramatic contrast with the way George W. Bush -- and, for that matter, Bill Clinton -- operated as president, Obama also continued the symbolic efforts he made throughout his inaugural to emphasize his stated purpose of seeking bipartisanship, ending the politics of discord and personal abuse that have dominated both parties at least since the Democratic campaign to scuttle the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Robert Bork more than 20 years ago. He took time alone in the Oval Office to read the letter left there for him by President Bush.

Obama hit the ground running during his first day in the Oval Office. Do not expect the pace to slacken.