Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Getting Honest Advice

There's this big brouhaha going on that Bush won't release documents that Harriet Miers authored while serving in the White House. Senators want to review them for their "advise and consent" role, but Bush won't release them. When asked about it yesterday Scott McCellan repeated the party line: "The President depends on his staff to receive open and candid advice as he moves ahead on the decision-making process. It would be unprecedented for a sitting President to release deliberative decision-making documents while they are in office. That is unheard of. It would have a chilling effect on the ability of the President to continue to receive sound and open and candid advice from his advisors." Ok, though I suspect that without more info, Senators will exercise their constitutional right and reject the nomination.

So I read the Boston Globe today and I see that yesterday the president met with his Cabinet, live on TV. Really, you can even get the
video from the White House website. If the fear of releasing papers would co-opt his ability to get sound advice, even assuming the relevant parties agreed to it, how is it that you can televise a cabinet meeting? Unfortunately I know the answer, it wasn't a real meeting, just a stunt. I'm not sure if that's better or worse

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