Politics

Obama Administration Most Transparent in History, More Than One of Three Americans Believe: Who Are These People?

37 percent

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In Stephen Colbert's (in)famous roast of President Bush at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Dinner, the comedian compared the president's approval ratings, in the 30s, to a glass half (or rather two-thirds) empty, pointing out that "the last third is usually backwash."  So maybe, then, the 37 percent of Americans that still believe Obama's claim that this is the "most transparent administration in history" are mostly backwash.

The claim, after all, is patently untrue. The administration's aggressive pursuit of whistleblowers (they've prosecuted more than twice the number of people for government leaks than all previous administrations combined) contradicts the transparency claim. The fact that Obama says he welcomes the debate ignited by Edward Snowden's revelations about the NSA, and was going to do it anyway, even as that leaker is a fugitive contradicts the transparency claim. Reporting from Reason contradicts the transparency claim.

Presidents lie. That oft-repeated, rarely-heeded, truism has been used to defend some of President Obama's other lies. CNN's LZ Granderson, for example, dismissed the president's broken promise about keeping your health plan (which PolitiFact belatedly declared the lie of the year this year) as just something presidents "have" to do sometimes. Other Obama apologists objected to Granderson's claim; the president wasn't lying. They say, and some of them must actually believe, that it's not a lie because the plans being dropped aren't the "same" plans people had when the promise was made, even though they've had continuous coverage from then until their plan was dropped due to Obamacare. The transparency lie is much harder to delude yourself into believing. Yet apparently 37 percent of Americans manage to do so, or are just clueless. It's as good a reason as any to donate to Reason, which is on the front lines of exposing this and other lies, from politicians on both sides of the aisle, so that the voting public might be better informed about the people trying to manipulate and mislead them.