President-elect Barack Obama's most significant act thus far is not the decision to vigorously rescue the U.S. economy. Rather, it's his determination to reverse dozens or more of President Bush's executive orders that trashed Abraham Lincoln's uplifting concept of "government of the people, by the people, for the people."
As Obama countermands Bush orders—he imposed some 268 such declarations—Obama will begin dismantling a house of horrors that appealed to a police-state mentality among rightwing Bush appointees and rewarded industrial and business cronies for their greed and abuse of the public trust.
Yet, the presidential executive orders are a mere sliver of evidence of harm wrought by Bush and his secretive, dark alter ego, Vice President Cheney. Hundreds of thousands of e-mails between the White House control center and federal agency appointees contain far more damning evidence of Bush-Cheney-Karl Rove tactics that led to history's worst presidential approval ratings and a government in utter collapse and disgrace.
Did they have something to hide?
Of course they did. Much White House official business was conducted via e-mail through computer servers of the Republican National Committee to purposely be out of public and congressional reach, then destroyed. To prevent a feared mass destruction of more official documents, a federal judge has ordered the White House to preserve 65,000 computer backup tapes containing thousands of e-mail messages sought by several government watchdog groups.
Unless the incoming Obama administration finds flagrant criminal conduct in White House communications, the new president isn't likely to prosecute. It's Obama's nature to turn away from the past and build the future. Humiliation through public disclosure would provide partial punishment.
Americans may finally get a peek into Bush White House machinations that brought disrepute on the American government abroad (CIA kidnappings, torture, the Guantanamo Bay prison for detainees) and at home (illegal wiretapping, multibillion dollar, no-bid contracts for Cheney's former employer, Halliburton, relaxed regulation of Wall Street, gearing decisions to accommodate religious activists).
Unless Cheney, who is wont to ignore law and Congress, has destroyed files, the public might also finally learn who attended the secret meeting of energy tycoons early in the Bush presidency and what deals were made with the White House. This would be conclusive evidence of why Bush for eight years opened up the environment for abuse by extraction industries.
These will be troubling for Republicans. For Bush appointees, disclosure of their activities will forever stain them as accessories in a destructive, public-be-damned presidency. For other Republicans, they must tardily repudiate the Bush years or defend them and look like fools.
