President Barack Obama promised us change. More specifically, he promised us the end of "business as usual" in Washington. After years of behind-closed-doors dealings and shrewd White House cover-ups, he told us we should expect our government to be transparent and accountable. He hoped to change the partisan culture of politics in Washington so that our government could operate more efficiently and more effectively for the American people.
In his first week in the White House, it appeared Obama was following through on his ambitious words. On his first day, he issued an executive order demanding that all executive employees of the United States government swear an oath of ethical behavior. This included a ban on accepting lobbyist gifts and on using the powers of their office to aid industries or employers with whom they have previously been involved.
Despite initial encouraging signs, Obama has unfortunately reverted to playing the political games he pledged to end. His now infamous nominee for Secretary for Health and Human Services, Tom Daschle, was the beginning of what has been a steady fall back to "business as usual" in Washington.
Daschle appears to have both evaded federal taxes and benefited (to the tune of about five million dollars) from his office's influence from lobbyists. After initially defending his appointment of Daschle and overlooking the tax evasion scandal, Obama eventually was forced to recognize his mistake. Daschle withdrew his nomination to end the first political embarrassment of the new administration's short time in power.
The first major item on Obama's agenda has been the legislation of a stimulus package aimed at giving economic relief to a nation badly in need of a lift. Unfortunately, getting the bill to his desk to sign has proven more difficult than he would have hoped.
Obama set the tone for a more bipartisan government in meeting with and listening to the ideas of a number of Republican lawmakers. But, he then delegated to the Democratic leaders in the House (granted, it is their responsibility to make the law) the responsibility of writing the bill. This was his first major legislative action as president.
Unfortunately, Nancy Pelosi and her fellow Democrats in the House weren't paying attention when Obama promised an end the era of special interest projects and lobbyists who dominate lawmaking decisions in Washington.
In a bill intended to stimulate the economy—the single greatest problem we face as a nation—by giving government money to different sectors of the economy, special interest groups and local governments have somehow decided to make it about a series of smaller issues like improving roads and building new schools. Do I think those things would necessarily be a bad thing? No. But at the same time they represent an additional hurdle to achieving the bill's main purpose and serve as additional fodder for politicians to revert to their favorite pastime—haggling and accusing each other of being hypocrites.
So what has our new president done to speed up the process? Has he reminded us that "we aren't red America and blue America, but we are the United States of America?" Has he called to mind our nation's motto "E pluribus unum"—"Out of many, one?" Has he emphasized the fact that we are all (or at least all should be) working towards the same goal?
Unfortunately, our president has chosen to take a page out of the Bush manual: namely, the politics of fear. He's used the words "I won" to legitimize his and his party's right to pass this bill regardless of what Republicans may think. In what amounted to an ultimatum, he demanded that the bill be on his desk to sign by February 16 and told us, "Failure to act, and act now, will turn a crisis into a catastrophe." This tactic did work in getting the Senate and the House to let us go to war in Iraq, after all.
If Barack Obama wants to bring real change to Washington, he's going to have to change the way he goes about getting things done as president. While he is saying the right things and reportedly expressing a genuine desire to work together with House and Senate Republicans as we move forward, his initial actions leave much to be desired for the idealists and hope mongers who represented a large chunk of his voting block last fall.
I'm all for getting things done, but please, President Obama, get them done the way you said you would. Get them done the right way.
Craig Hardt is a member of the Class of 2012.