Well, give President Trump credit. This time he's managed to offend liberals and conservatives to about an equal degree. The announced policy that White House visitor logs won't be made public has the Capitol astir. And it should. The White House is the people's house. It's not Trump Tower or Mar-a-Lago or one of Trump's golf clubs.
Trump is a temporary resident, and who comes and goes is the people's business, period. President Obama had an open policy for eight years wherein logs were released.
What's up with Trump? His aides say the logs won't be released until he's been out of office for five years. That's preposterous. Any president, if national security demands it, can keep confidential visits that need to be kept secret for legitimate reasons. This policy smacks of arrogance. No less than Tom Fitton, head of a conservative watchdog group, said, "This new secrecy policy undermines the rule of law and suggests this White House doesn't want to be accountable to the American people." Exactly.
And it prompts the question: What's Trump hiding? Business associates and wheeler-dealers? Lobbyists? Donors?
A policy that creates more questions than answers is a bad policy.
FROM AN EDITORIAL IN THE RALEIGH NEWS & OBSERVER
