New Era? Not so much.

Per the LA Times:

Invoking an argument used by President George W. Bush, the Obama administration has turned down a request from a watchdog group for a list of health industry executives who have visited the White House to discuss the massive healthcare overhaul.

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As a candidate, President Obama vowed that in devising a healthcare bill he would invite in TV cameras -- specifically C-SPAN -- so that Americans could have a window into negotiations that normally play out behind closed doors.

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"It's extremely disappointing," said Anne Weismann, the group's chief counsel. Obama is relying on a legal argument that "continues one of the bad, anti-transparency, pro-secrecy approaches that the Bush administration had taken. And it seems completely at odds with the president's commitment . . . to bring a new level of transparency to his government."

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of politics to me is that politicians in general decry the "politics as usual" of secrecy, influence peddling, wasteful spending, corruption, and partisanship only as long as it takes to get elected. Then they quickly resort to all of these tactics, and sometimes worse, to stay elected. I am particularly disgusted by Obama's failures to live up to basic promises since he offered so few objective qualifications to lead besides his powerful and emotional rhetoric calling for change on these matters.

Whether it was his promise to post bills online before signing or to restrict lobbyists from working for him, or his present political maneuvering over health care, Obama is showing himself to be no different than any other politician who makes promises on the campaign trail they never intend to keep.

Perhaps even more disconcerting than retaining politics as usual is Obama's eagerness to utilize what the Washington Post recently called "a perfect extension of Bush's worst trait as president," whipping up sky-is-falling atmospheres of crises to push through large, transformative, and mostly unexamined legislation:

Bush learned the hard way that running government as a perpetual crisis machine leads to bad policy and public fatigue. Obama's insistence on taking advantage of a crisis to push through every item on the progressive checklist right now is threatening to complete that cycle within his first year.