Dan Rather ... It is not about policy and it is not about party. It is about power, rights and transparency.
United States Senate 886 is a bill that everyone ought to be able to support. Well, everyone who hasn't worked at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, that is.
Because U.S. Senate 886, otherwise known as the 'Presidential Records Act Amendments of 2007', would overturn one of the more disturbing aspects of President Bush's campaign for White House secrecy, his executive order of November 1, 2001, that effectively gutted the 1978 Presidential Records Act (PRA). Why should you care?
The original act was passed in the wake of the widespread criminal conspiracy run out of the White House and known by the shorthand 'Watergate'.
With that experience fresh in the national memory, it was a step to ensure that citizens and historians retain possession and, after a period of 12 years, access to the documents, on paper, electronic or otherwise, produced by the chief executive elected by and in the pay of We the People.
President Bush's executive order was not much noticed at the time, coming as it did just a few weeks after the attacks of 9/11, but it greatly broadened the powers of incumbent and former presidents to withhold their records and to do so virtually indefinitely.
Bequeathed to heirs
How indefinitely? The 2001 amendment to the PRA established a procedure whereby the right to review and deny requests for a former president's records could be bequeathed to his or her heirs, meaning that a president could practically take his or her secrets to the grave. Significantly, President Bush's 2001 amendment also extended its protections to incumbent and former vice-presidents.
The current bill, which has passed the House and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, would effectively restore the PRA to where it stood before the 2001 amendment.
Amid strong indications that the President would veto the bill if it reaches his desk, it's important for the Senate, like the House, to pass it by a veto-proof majority if it is to become law.
It's also important for citizens and the press to keep a close eye on any amendments made to the Senate version of the bill, not to mention any signing statements the president may attach, if he does indeed affix his signature to it.
Transparency is key
The bill has received broad bipartisan support because it is not about policy and it is not about party. It is about power, rights and transparency.
We invest our presidents with a certain degree of power, but this power should not, except in certain matters of legitimate national-security interest (and it should be noted that classified presidential records are not subject to disclosure anyway), trump the people's right to know the workings of what is, after all, our government.
Transparency is a key com-ponent of government of, by and for the people, and a full knowledge of our history is essential to the future of our country. In an era of greatly expanded presidential power, the historical record would suffer grievous gaps if records from President Reagan through the first President Bush, President Clinton, the current President Bush and beyond were largely absent. And it would not be history if presidents were to maintain their broad ability to cherry-pick what the public does and doesn't get to see - it would be propaganda.
There is irony in the current administration seeking to keep such protections on its own secrets while asserting sweeping powers to conduct surveillance on other Americans. But this is something that transcends the issues of our day. It gets to the fundamental question of just what kind of society we are. Whomever our enemies are, whatever the challenges we face from without, we must ask ourselves whether we want to remain a free and open nation within.
Dan Rather is an American television broadcaster.
