Obama was lying when he claimed that the health care negotiations would be televised. That’s no surprise. Obama has no desire to be open or transparent (but he would like people to think his Administration is open and transparent). Regardless of Obama’s broken promises, Mickey Kaus has some perspective:

C-SPAN BFD: Complaints about the Dems failure to televise or otherwise open up the House/Senate health care negotiations seem near-completely hollow (as were Obama’s promises during the campaign). Real legislative deals are always most efficiently cut behind closed doors, where the principals can be candid and concession-minded without fear of embarrassment, and where they can’t grandstand. … That’s life.  It’s not like we don’t know what the issues are, or that we won’t find out how they’ve been resolved ….If the Dems let C-SPAN cover the negotiations they’d just have to find another room nearby in which to hold the real negotiations first. …

 

In essence, understandably desperate Republicans (aided in this case by MSM reporters looking for a bit of cheap, non-ideological adversarialism) have now adopted, for tactical reasons, one of the most immature goo-goo liberal fantasies: the idea that "open meetings" on high-profile issues produce actual legislative transparency (as opposed to another layer of fake transparency). Next they’ll be complaining the negotiators don’t exhibit enough race and gender diversity. …