by Matt Barr

How evil and nefarious do you think the Bush administration's evil and nefarious secrecy policies are?

A new poll by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University shows that the Bush administration is a secret cabal trying to keep the unwashed public in the dark about its nefarious doings. Like it was supposed to!

The poll was conducted beginning February 19. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear and remember what was in the news as the group prepared to foist its poll on 1,007 unsuspecting adults. The week prior, Rep. Christopher Shays (R-CT) held a National Security Subcommittee hearing on the plight of whistleblowers in wartime, complaining that "whistleblowers in critical national security positions are vulnerable to unique forms of retaliation." The PATRIOT Act narrowly avoided a Russ Feingold-led filibuster effort by a vote of 96-3. The National Journal carried a cover story entitled "Long Live the King!" about the Imperial Presidency.

Other news outlets dutifully lent column inches to explaining the problem. Georgetown professor Gary Wasserman wrote in the Washington Post Feb. 16:

Not content with jailing an employee for mishandling classified material, the government is applying to private citizens a never-used part of the 1917 Espionage Act. Its expanding secrecy powers threaten to paralyze public participation in making foreign policy. The experts, lobbyists and journalists who, in the normal routines of their jobs, discuss confidential information could now become criminals.

Sounds serious! But none of these things were the big news story of that week. When subcommittee hearings are the big story of the week, kindly shoot me. Like how the Vice President that previous weekend shot that one guy, creating a media frenzy about... how the media couldn't report about it. Newsday:

Cheney has never masked his disdain for the press. And he shares with President George W. Bush a penchant for secrecy that's unhealthy for a democracy.

That was their modus operandi in the administration's early days, when they fought in the Supreme Court to keep quiet the names of industry insiders who helped develop national energy policy. And it remained the modus operandi when Bush authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without warrants and then kept it secret until this year, when the press blew the whistle. Some government secrecy is necessary. But the necessity defense won't stretch to cover Cheney's hunting mishap.

The Financial Times and the Independent in Britain wrote of "Cheney and the Public's Right To 'No'" and how "The High Priest of Secrecy Still Rules the U.S." So insidious secrecy was in the air when the poll was undertaken, and when the results were released this week, the AP knew what to do:

[The] poll, by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University, found that 64 percent of respondents thought the federal government is somewhat or very secretive, while more than a third think their local and state governments lean more toward secrecy. Fifty-five percent said state and local governments were somewhat or very open.

But Americans were more closely divided on when government information should be made public, according to the telephone poll of 1,007 adults.

Forty-six percent said government records should be considered public and their release should only be blocked when it "would do harm"; 42 percent said the government should protect its information and only release it if there is a "sound legal case" for it to be public.

Let's drill down a little, being that we're a blog and not the AP. First of all, 62 percent, not 64, said the federal government is somewhat secretive or completely secretive, given those choices and "somewhat open" and "very open." Isn't a choice between "somewhat secretive" and "somewhat open" like the heretofore-unexplained difference between partly cloudy and partly sunny? Given the news buzz at the time of the poll, would a respondent wanting to stake out the middle position pick partly open or partly secretive? Right.

Respondents were also asked whether they think there's too much, too little or just the right amount of secrecy in the federal government:

Too much secrecy: 59 percent
Too little: 9 percent
Right amount: 28 percent

"Secrecy," see, isn't a positive thing in and of itself, like "openness" is; you keep things secret for a reason this poll seems determined not to identify or explore. So I want to know who these Michigan Militia members are who said there's "too little secrecy." They're about the only ones who would pick that choice of the ones offered.

Of course, prior to all this, respondents were asked:

In general, how important do you believe open public access to government records and information is? Do you believe that public access is critical to the functioning of good government, or do you believe that it plays only a minor role?

Establishing that open public records is important, and the only question is to what extent. Now, this happens to be true, but this series of questions avoids even the pretense of trying to balance security and openness. Where is the question, "in general, do you think it's more important that government keep records secret in the name of security, that records be open in the name of the public's right to know, or are they equally important?"

I guess it's this one, noted in the AP story, which asks whether records should be public unless releasing them "would do harm" or if they should be kept secret unless a citizen has a "sound legal case." But in addition to being a horribly drafted question, this is a question about what the state of records should be absent extenuating circumstances, which doesn't get into what factors should determine "harm" or what a "sound legal case" is, so it's not really the same thing.

Another series of questions asks whether "right to know" or "sunshine" laws (are you for or against the right to know? How about sunshine?) give you too much, too little or the right amount of access to government meetings, hearings and court records. Unsurprisingly, "I have too much access" didn't fare well, at 4 percent and 7 percent. "I'm flush with court records and attending more government hearings than I can handle! Heeelllp!"

We couldn't even muster a "Is it too hard or too easy for anyone to have access to court records, or just right?" Or even "do anti-government, anti-privacy laws make it too easy for terrorists to find the blueprints to Cleveland Browns Stadium at the Recorder of Deeds?" No. Well, of course I don't think I have too much access. I'm not trying to kill a bunch of people.

The point of the poll was to riff off the prevailing news angle at the time the poll was launched about the evils of government secrecy, not to figure out what the public really thinks about it. The news media itself will take care of letting the public know what it really thinks, thanks, don't get up!

There is an interesting bit in this poll, if you compare a couple responses as so:

I want to ask how interested you are in the actions and activities of various levels of government. So when it comes to your state and local governments, would you say you are very interested, somewhat interested, somewhat uninterested or completely uninterested? How about the federal government?

	State and local	Federal
Very interested	39	53
Somewhat interested	48	36
Somewhat uninterested	8	7
Completely uninterested	4	3

The "uninterested" numbers are very similar, so what's revealing about this is the relative level of interest people have in the federal government versus their state and local. True, the federal government is what they see on their cable news shows and hear on talk radio, and there's a war on. But think about what, say, Thomas Jefferson would say if he saw this result. You'd rather hear about what some maroon from Wisconsin is trying to do to stifle the executive branch's law enforcement powers than discuss whether your local school has good books and equipment? You'd rather hear how Sam Alito belonged to a shady Princeton alumni group than that your township trustee is hiring his unqualified brother in law to do building inspections in your neighborhood?

Maybe you would. Well, clearly you would, I guess. Which means either the relative power and level of intrusion of the federal government are completely out of whack compared to more local governments, or people want it that way. Or, I'm afraid most likely, both.

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