Two days after taking office, President Obama declared “transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.” Five months later, America has experienced a rude awakening. Promise after promise has been thrown to the wind in the name of political convenience.

The most recent demonstration of the President’s deceit came in the form of a virtual town hall on July 1 that was marketed as an opportunity for the American people to directly ask the President about important issues using new media like Facebook and Twitter.

In a press conference just hours before the event, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was forced to reveal a very different picture than that painted by White House advertisements. CBS White House correspondent Chip Reid pressed Gibbs into revealing that White House officials heavily screened both the live audience and the electronically submitted questions.

This exchange prompted Helen Thomas, long-time White House correspondent for the Associated Press, to accuse the administration of unprecedented attempts to control the press.

“I’m not saying there has never been managed news before, but this is carried to fare-thee-well–for the town halls, for the press conferences. It’s blatant,” Thomas said. They don’t give a damn if you know it or not. They ought to be hanging their heads in shame…What the hell do they think we are, puppets?”

Based on the fawning way in which news organizations like ABC, Time, and Newsweek have covered the administration, it would come as no surprise if the answer was yes.

Just as Thomas said, the Obama administration has been engaged in a “pattern of controlling the press” that is without precedent in recent years. It is a control that is born, not from coercion, but from the sheer popularity of the President and the willingness of the press to acquiesce to his demands.

Even if people are skeptical of this, it is difficult to find an alternative explanation for the sheer shamelessness with which Obama defaults on very specific promises to the American people. While he was campaigning for the presidency, Obama promised that, “When there’s a bill that ends up on my desk as president, you the public will have five days to look online and find out what’s in it before I sign it, so that you know what your government’s doing.” This is a promise that was easy for him to keep; all it required was patience and an openness to submit his decisions to the review of the American people.

Yet The New York Times reports, “Mr. Obama has signed two dozen bills, but he has almost never waited five days.”

There is a consistent gap between Obama’s high-minded rhetoric and the actual policies he chooses to adopt. In most politicians, some degree of this is expected and forgivable. Obama stands out because of his determination to sell himself as a radically new politician, one who will cut through the doublespeak of Washington and deliver on his promises to the American people.

The image Obama has fashioned is directly at odds with the way in which he chooses to engage the public. The increasing censure coming from normally liberal journalists combined with the increasing pile of broken promises might indicate that Obama has brought transparency to Washington after all.

Obama has not given the people the government accountability he promised, but he has given us a transparent view into the content of his character.

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