Rewriting History in Oval Office

By: Marianne Means

Either White House press secretary Ari Fleischer needs a lesson in American history or he thinks we know so little about our national past that we would buy a blatant political spin that disparages the Founding Fathers.

Incredibly, Fleischer recently defended the White House insistence on keeping the names of the participants in Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force a secret by claiming that the precedent for such arrogant behavior was set by the drafters of the Constitution.

Asked why President Bush and Cheney are adamant about denying a General Accounting Office request for the names of the panel's advisers, Fleischer tried to wrap their controversial decision in historical context:

"The very document that protects our liberties more than anything else, the Constitution, was, of course, drafted in total secrecy. The founders ... recognized that in order to make careful decisions, they wanted to set forth a deliberative and thoughtful process and they concluded to do so quietly."

Good grief! The administration's pro-industry energy policy is the substantive equivalent of the Constitution! The energy panel's sessions were a model of thoughtfulness and balance, not a special-interest picnic! The mind boggles.

This is a flagrant revision of history. Fleischer selected one narrow fact to make a misleading point while ignoring the reality. The Founding Fathers actually operated very much in the open.

They were not a clandestine band of wealthy industrialists pressing self-serving policies on an ideologically sympathetic government without regard to the public good. Theirs was the great cause of framing a democratic experiment unique in the world, for which they needed unity among themselves and public support for ratification.

The legislatures of the 13 states published the names of those they chose as delegates to the 1787 Federal Convention, which later was called the Constitutional Convention as it became clear where their deliberations were leading. The delegates were prominent public figures rather than mysterious businessmen ashamed to acknowledge what advice they were offering. Many convention framers had previously held elective office. They did not hide. The media knew who they were.

When deliberations began that hot summer in Philadelphia, the doors of the meeting hall were indeed closed to the press and others. The delegates knew they had to go beyond their initial instructions to merely tweak the Articles of Confederation, which were inadequate to undergird a fledgling democracy. They needed privacy to debate a whole new way of governing. They represented diverse regions with nothing in common except the urgency of forming a new central government strong enough to hold the quarreling states together.

They were going about something much more fundamental and shocking than promoting the welfare of the oil and gas industry. And when they were done, they all signed the resulting document for the world to see.

As soon as the delegates had agreed, they flung open the doors and invited public inspection. Within days, newspapers published the full document and the debate was on.

The Constitution was sent to the states, where it was debated in the press and the legislatures and eventually ratified by every state legislature. The Founding Fathers flooded the country with the records they had kept of their debates, copies of letters they had written to friends, philosophical arguments over the wisdom of their actions - anything to spread the word about the content and purpose of what they had done. They knew the Constitution would not be accepted if it were shrouded in secrecy.

The White House handling of the cowardly Cheney task force is the antithesis of this openness. The administration argues that to release any information about that group would have a chilling effect on the President's ability to function. The idea is that the participants must remain anonymous because otherwise they wouldn't have the nerve to give frank advice. If they are ashamed to have their opinions exposed to others, however, perhaps their advice is not so hot.

The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, isn't asking for controversial confidences that the panelists whispered in the Vice President's ear. The agency is seeking only information that clearly should be on the public record - the identities of the participants, those they met with and the subjects they talked about. The fuss over this request is so overblown that it forces one to ask what the White House might be hiding.

Poor Fleischer, having exhausted all remotely credible defenses, tried in desperation to drag in the Founding Fathers. This miserable effort is not what those worthies had in mind when they produced their brilliant formula of federal checks and balances.