Drawing a Blankley
Is there a public “right to know?”
Tony Blankley offers a perfect example of what “public philosophy” can look like in today’s Washington Times. According to Blankley, several recent events call into question what he calls “the perennial assertion that, on grounds of both efficacy and ethics, the public’s right to know is the best guide to good government and good institutions.”
Increased transparency in government was an oft-stated goal by then-candidate Obama on the campaign trail and the now installed Obama Administration has issued several warm declarations on policies and initiatives designed to foster openness.
As Blankley points out, recent events suggest that the mere value of “transparency” doesn’t help solve tough government disclosure cases:
Consider four recent controversial events:
(1) Advance announcement of the bank “stress tests” by the Treasury Department.
(2) Nondisclosure at the time of the Henry M. Paulson/Ben S. Bernanke threat to fire Bank of America Chief Executive Officer Ken Lewis if he didn’t complete the Bank of America purchase of Merrill Lynch.
(3) Release of the terrorist interrogation memorandums.
(4) Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s public disclosure that the U.S. government considers the possible fall of the Pakistani government to the Taliban a “mortal threat” to the United States.
Each of those disclosure/nondisclosure decisions has been sharply contested. And in none of them is the general principle of transparency a useful guide.
Irrespective of Blankley’s conclusions about the right way to answer these questions, his method is a perfect exposition of what structured ethical evaluation of public policy could look like. You take a rule — “transparency” or “the right to know” — and evaluate it against several examples. The next step, which Blankley doesn’t take, would be to try and construct a replacement rule when the test cases conclude against the provisional rule.
Even without the added step, our national dialogue is improved when we question and assess the principles that guide public and political conduct.
-Sam
Related posts:
- Financial transparency and distributive justice
- Give me health care, or give me death
- Is WikiLeaks WikiLegal?
- State skepticism
- Friends can be statesmen, but can statesmen be friends?
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