Beyond the Dome

It might not last beyond the election, but for now, at least, the two presidential candidates seem to be in a race to see who can be the biggest champion of open government.

Today, Barack Obama put out a plan to “reform the greed and excesses of Washington” that went way beyond responding to the near-collapse of the nation’s financial system. Among other things, his plan calls for opening congressional negotiations to the public, letting people watch agency meetings on the Web, overhauling the Bush administration’s system of rating the performance of federal programs, reducing earmarks, and listing the industries that benefit from new tax breaks passed by Congress.

For a guy who’s usually accused of being too vague and rhetorical, he put out so many nuts and bolts today that it’s hard to see how he could get even half of them done. Especially since some of them, at least, will require the sign-off of congressional leaders who haven’t always been champions of open government themselves.

John McCain, meanwhile, has already promised in his Republican convention speech to “set a new standard for transparency and accountability.” He hasn’t fleshed out a lot of details, but he has dropped hints in past speeches, such as pledging to come before Congress and answer questions like the British prime minister does in “question time” before the House of Commons.

It’s a natural competition, considering both McCain and Obama worked on ethics and transparency issues in various forms in the Senate. And both are co-sponsors of a bill that would expand the federal spending database created by a 2006 law co-written by Obama and Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma.

“It’s a race to the top, if you will,” said Gary D. Bass, founder and executive director of OMB Watch, an executive branch watchdog group. “It’s a pleasant competition to see who can call for more transparency. It’s exciting, from my point of view.”

Bass says Obama has gotten more specific about his ideas, though — particularly with today’s plan, which gets into such arcane details as banning employees of his administration from working on any regulations or contracts for two years that have anything to do with their prior work.

Of course, neither candidate has been total models of openness on the campaign trail, which should give people plenty of reason to wonder whether they’d actually keep their promises. McCain once promised to hold weekly news conferences as president, but rarely bothers to take questions from the campaign press corps anymore, preferring tightly scripted speeches instead.

And Obama has been known to treat press questions as a chore as well, as in the March press conference where he complained, “Come on guys, I answered like eight questions.”

Still, both candidates have now been vocal enough about their open-government goals that it will be hard for either one of them to walk them back completely in the White House.