A 'charming liar', or an incredibly honest, transparent and upright individual?

In an interview with ABC News' Diane Sawyer on Monday, Barack Obama insisted that he was firmly adhering to his campaign pledge to increase transparency in the White House. The secretive, backroom negotiations that have occurred over the last year, he said, were conducted by lawmakers in congress and had absolutely nothing to do with him:

"Let's just clarify," Obama said. "I didn't make a bunch of deals. There is a legislative process that is taking place in Congress and I am happy to own up to the fact that I have not changed Congress and how it operates the way I would have liked. So, that's point number one. Number two is that, I think, it is important to know that the promises we made about increased transparency we've executed here in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue!"

It was clearly evident from the interview that Obama absolutely abhors backroom negotiations and detests the shady and secretive deals that Congress recently hammered out to push through his health care proposals.

The recent closed-door meetings at the White House with Union leaders [concerning a proposed Cadillac tax exemption for the Unions], apparently, were arranged without the President's knowledge.

The sweetheart deal that Harry Reid cut with Sen. Ben Nelson to cover Nebraska's share of the Medicaid expansion, it seems, were also hammered out without Obama's knowledge, despite the fact that [as the Politico notes] the President's senior adviser, Pete Rouse, and his deputy chief of staff, Jim Messina, were in the room throughout the entire meeting.

And, although, the White House recently awarded a $25 million federal contract to a company owned by a Democratic campaign contributor without entertaining competitive bids [even though Obama, in the past, had asserted that no-bid contracts were "completely unacceptable" and pledged to "end the abuse of no-bid contracts once and for all", saying that "the days of sweetheart deals for Halliburton will be over when I'm in the White House"] that too, was done without Obama's knowledge. What's more, the contract was awarded in a highly transparent, albeit, secretive manner.

It is also now quite clear that the sweetheart deal, cut between the White House and Big Pharma several months ago, was negotiated by Congressional Democrats without Obama's knowledge, despite the fact that the Democrats were opposed to the deal because Big Pharma had won a concession from the White House to bar the importation of cheaper drugs from abroad.

Conclusion: It is plainly obvious that the President was not privy to any of these backroom deals. And yet, for some reason or another, Obama's own supporters are assailing him over the matter - with some going so far as to call him a 'charming liar' - I'm shocked!



Apparently, Obama's constituents are suffering from a self-defeatist and self-sabotage mindset, and are unwilling to acknowledge the truth, namely, that Barack Obama - the man they succeeded in putting into the Oval Office - is, with out doubt, the most transparent and upright individual ever to ascend to the Presidency.