The premium area of Salon, which I keep touting here, has a good interview with Harry Shearer. The following excerpt strikes me as a very good phrasing of something I believe, and have said here less eloquently. Shearer was asked about Dick Cheney having to turn over details of his energy task force meetings and he replied…
If you live long enough, one of the rewards is to get the privilege of seeing each political cliché mouthed in turn by partisans from each side. So that the same people who were desperately demanding that we know chapter and verse about Hillary Clinton's top-secret healthcare task force are now saying, "No, no, no, confidentiality, it's an important principle." And vice versa. It explains why, or it's a consequence of the fact that most of our politicians are trained as lawyers. Because that's exactly what lawyers are trained to do: Take this side, all right, now take this side. That's what they do. And anybody who thinks that they're doing anything else is welcome to bid for some Enron stock certificates on eBay, because that is the game.