Recall Candidate Barack Obama talking eloquently, as he always does, about the necessity of holding all health care reform meetings in public and televising them live on C-SPAN?

Candidate Obama:

pledged during a presidential debate in January 2008 that he would be "bringing all parties together, and broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people can see what the choices are."

The openness theme was repeatedly invoked by Obama (it fit in to his "Washington outsider" approach):

At a visit to Google in 2007, Mr. Obama noted that the Clintons had made a mistake in the early 1990s by designing their health care plan “in isolation from the American people.”

“We will work on this process publicly,” he added. “It will be on C-Span. It will be streaming over the Net.”

At another point during the campaign, Mr. Obama argued that if a member of Congress was “carrying water for the drug companies,” for example, television coverage would expose it. “You can shame Congress into doing the right thing if people know what’s going on,” he said.

Nice words, Barack, but what a whopper of a lie that was! It tied in with the other Obama whopper to hold the "most open administration in U.S. history."

Recall that shortly after Obama made those promises, he met in secret, behind closed doors with the representatives of major insurance companies to discuss health care reform. His administration denied this until the New York Times broke the story and gave the details of the meetings. Shortly after those secret meetings, President Obama gave up completely on any public option (it’s " a sliver", which was really an understatement of how little he thought of it) and began talking about "insurance reform" not "public health reform". His talk to both houses of Congress in September introduced a mandated system of insurance which Dennis Kucinich rightly called "the wrong approach, a sell-out to the insurance companies."

So now the same man who campaigned and won an election largely on the promise that he would do things differently in Washington is doing the same old things the same old ways: in secret, in smoke-filled rooms, behind closed doors.

But as another diarist here put it, some called Obama’s bluff. Powwow has a good diary up called "Let the C-SPAN cameras in, Democrats. [The Party's "Open Government" bluff just got called.] That’s a very worthwhile read but Powwow discusses some things I don’t (especially filibusters) and vice versa. I think the blame for this broken campaign promise should be laid at the foot of the man who made it to the American people: Barack Obama. He’s also the guy who nixed the public option, who took single payer single-handedly off the table, and who, in Sen. Russ Feingold’s assessment, got exactly the insurance based bill that he originally wanted.

Now the final details of that bill, perhaps the most important piece of domestic legislation since the 1960′s, will be hammered out in secret, behind closed doors at the behest of the leader of the Democratic party:

Democrats reacted defensively to criticism that they are taking the final, most crucial stage of the debate behind closed doors. "We will continue to keep the American people informed, as we have in the earlier stages," Van Hollen said, noting that hundreds of hearings and town hall meetings have been held.

But Obama as a candidate pledged during a presidential debate in January 2008 that he would be "bringing all parties together, and broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN so that the American people can see what the choices are."

That has not occurred, and C-SPAN is taking note. The network released a letter Tuesday from chief executive Brian Lamb to congressional leaders asking for the talks to be opened to cameras.

"Now that the process moves to the critical stage of reconciliation between the chambers, we respectfully request that you allow the public full access, through television, to legislation that will affect the lives of every single American," Lamb wrote in the Dec. 30 letter.

Brian Lamb’s letter and what it asks for (which is recall, nothing less than what Obama promised to the nation) is so vitally important, it is worthy of reproducing in its entirety (it has been released to the public as a public service and is available at the New York Times form which I got it):

As your respective chambers work to reconcile the differences between the House and Senate health care bills, C-SPAN requests that you open all important negotiations, including any conference committee meetings, to electronic media coverage.

The C-SPAN networks will commit the necessary resources to covering all of these sessions LIVE and in their entirety. We will also, as we willingly do each day, provide C-SPAN’s multicamera coverage to any interested member of the Capitol Hill broadcast pool.

Since the initial introduction of the America’s Affordable Health Care Act of 2009 in the House and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in the Senate
C-SPAN has televised literally hundreds of hours of committee hearings, markups and floor debate on these bills for the public to see. And importantly, we have archived all of this video for future generations to study in the C-SPAN Video Archives.

President Obama, Senate and House leaders, many of your rank-and-file members, and the nation’s editorial pages have all talked about the value of transparent discussions on reforming the nation’s health care system. Now that the process moves to the critical stage of reconciliation between the Chambers, we respectfully request that you allow the public full access, through television, to legislation that will affect the lives of every single American.

We hope you will give serious consideration to this request. We are most willing to employ the latest digital technology to make the cameras, lights and microphones as unobtrusive as possible.

Please contact me if I can answer any questions.

Sincerely,

Brian Lamb

Kudos to Brian Lamb for holding Obama and the Democratic party accountable. Too bad that others, especially the mainstream media, haven’t done that too.

Interestingly, commentary from across the political spectrum, from left to right, has applauded Lamb’s call for openness in government. Here, for example, is part of an editorial from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

In a brilliant countermove on behalf of the American people, C-SPAN Chief Executive Officer Brian Lamb has politely asked to telecast what are expected to be closed-door meetings to hash out how the government plans to handle about one-sixth of the U.S. economy. After all, President Barack Obama pledged during his campaign to make the health-reform process as transparent as possible. Here is his opportunity to deliver.

Granted, the proceedings would not be considered must-see TV, but the C-SPAN sleep-inducing format nonetheless provides much-needed accountability. Given the Senate’s last-minute pork-barrel largesse to sway fence-sitting moderates before Christmas, the trust level is at low ebb.

Meanwhile,the Baltimore Sun television critic David Surawik commends Lamb:

Remember when candidate Barack Obama promised in 2008 that the healthcare reform debate would be held in full view of the "C-SPAN cameras" as part of his pledge of a new transparency in government?

It hasn’t exactly happened that way, has it? And now, with Democratic leadership in the Senate and House promising to take the process of reconciling the the two bills into even deeper darkness, C-SPAN has released a letter from CEO Brian Lamb showing that it isn’t cable TV’s fault that Americans are being kept from bearing witness to the creation of one of the most sweeping pieces of legislation in four decades.

…Read it and understand who is cutting the American public out of this process. I have been writing for months about the outstanding job C-SPAN has been doing in trying to take viewers behind the closed doors of this process — despite the efforts of Democratic leadership to keep the cameras at bay.

At the end of his article, Surawik asks his viewers to send in their comments and they did, overwhelmingly supporting Lamb’s open government approach. Not surprising, too, that Barack Obama’s DISAPPROVAL ratings (48.1%) surpassed his APPROVAL ratings (48%) over at the highly respected pollster.com a couple of days ago. His actions on health care reform are HUGELY unpopular.

Who is Brian Lamb? From Wikipedia:

Brian Patrick Lamb (born October 9, 1941[1] in Lafayette, Indiana[2]) is the founder and chief executive officer of C-SPAN, a television network dedicated to coverage of government proceedings and public affairs.[3] Born and raised in Lafayette, Indiana, Lamb earned a degree from Purdue University before joining the United States Navy. After various jobs in the communications field Lamb pitched his idea of a non-profit channel to cable executives, which was approved in 1977—C-SPAN began broadcasts two years later. Lamb has conducted over 1,000 interviews in his lifetime, starting in high school and continuing on C-SPAN programs including Booknotes and Q&A. He has compiled multiple books from his work on Booknotes. He is not registered as a Democrat or Republican. Lamb was married at age 63 and lives in Virginia.

Now let’s see how long it take before Rahm-Obama leads Lamb to the slaughter.