The role of trust in an era of transparency

It occurred to me that Barack Obama may be the beneficiary of two historical trends in the relationship between the president and the people.

In the early days of the republic, citizens had no effective means of monitoring the activities of the president. Although there were newspapers, the press had no regular access to the president. Moreover, because the papers tended to be openly and stridently partisan, editors were more interested in sparring with their opponents than in engaging in what we would recognize as journalism. Finally, because news couldn't travel any faster than a horse could canter down a country road, folks in distant towns and villages wouldn't learn of events in the capital until weeks after the fact.

Since those early days, Washington has been steadily transformed into an open book. There is now something called a "White House press corps" with permanent offices in the West Wing. Armies of journalists can spread news across the country at light speed. Moreover, the Washington media now operates without any of the deference or restraint that defined previous eras of reporting.

And it's not just the press that has changed. The exponential expansion of the government's payroll makes it nearly impossible for the White House to keep information under wraps even when state secrets are involved. In fact, secrecy is rarely the goal. Hordes of press officers and hundreds of government websites exist for the sole purpose of advertising the administration's activities and plans.

I would argue that the trend toward increased transparency in government has made trust a much less valued commodity when it comes to choosing a president. In the old days, the people had to trust the president to do the right thing, because they couldn't tell what was really happening in Washington. Today, with the goings on within the administration being broadcast in excruciating detail, there is comparatively little fear of a president taking surreptitious actions to the country's detriment. Presidents can still take or support controversial moves, but the controversy will be aired in public.

Our modern media leave much to be desired, but there is no question we live in an age of remarkable governmental transparency. That transparency creates at least the threat of holding presidents publicly accountable for their official actions. We no longer have to simply trust that our presidents are doing right. Today, it's "trust but verify."

A would-be president like Barack Obama could be a major beneficiary of this trend. A majority of Americans seem prepared to hand him the keys to the White House despite evidence of an extremely left-wing mindset. Since America is anything but a left-wing country, it is perhaps surprising to find Obama doing so well. Perhaps voters realize that Obama could never get away with a truly radical transformation of the country's political, economic, and social institutions. Thus, while they don't necessarily trust Obama not to try to take the country down the wrong road, they do trust the ability of the Republicans, the media, and popular opinion to stop him.

In order to test the validity of this argument, let's conduct this simple mind experiment. Imagine that instead of electing a president next month, America were electing a dictator. I submit that, if we were electing a dictator, John McCain would be out-polling Obama by a significant margin. The difference in Obama's electoral prospects under the two scenarios, I would argue, relates to trust. In an election for dictator, voters would necessarily place a great deal more importance on whether they could trust the candidate, and Obama would come up short in comparison to McCain. However, so long as the issue is "merely" who is chosen as president in the present-day atmosphere of extreme transparency, Americans feel than can afford to choose Obama.

I made reference to a second historical trend that seemingly favors Obama. I have long believed that politics has become a form of entertainment for many Americans. It's sort of a cross between a professional sporting event and a character drama. It has more to do with the personalities of the people involved than it does with the health and welfare of the country. People identify with certain politicians or parties and they want them to succeed. Or, they dislike the other side and want to see them fail. How the outcome of these dramas affect the country is of secondary concern. Indeed, many people are convinced it makes no difference in the real world which side comes out on top.

To whatever extent Americans regard politics as a form of entertainment, Obama holds that as an advantage over McCain. There's no question he's newer, trendier, and more interesting to watch than the 70-something Washington veteran. As McCain has already pointed out in this election, Obama makes for a pretty good celebrity.

What I find interesting is that the two concurrent trends -- increased transparency and increased focus on politics as a form of entertainment -- are really two sides of the same coin. Both are the product of the fact that the president now operates under a media spotlight. The spotlight allows an attractive candidate like Obama to appeal to people in the same way a movie star appeals to people. But the spotlight also arguably constrains him from taking radical,transformative moves for which there would be a lack of widespread popular support.