A Shared Resistance to Transparency

WASHINGTON -- Transparency is not the natural instinct of the politician. The political mind tends to think: What voters don't know can't hurt you. What political opponents, and media, do with information can.

So the ordinary urge is to hold close, to dribble out, to yield the bare minimum, unless the politician perceives some comparative advantage in revelation. (Think Jeb Bush, eye on Hillary Clinton, unloading years of gubernatorial emails, plus a gusher of tax returns.) The role of the media should be to counter this impulse toward secrecy, demand disclosure and -- in appropriate circumstances and appropriate ways -- inflict pain on candidates who resist.

Such as this column.

The current campaign features two parallel arguments over transparency -- on the Republican side, Donald Trump's tax returns; on the Democratic side, transcripts of Hillary Clinton's paid speeches.

The two issues are not equivalent, in that releasing tax returns has been a standard rite of presidential candidacy for decades. According to tax historian Joseph Thorndike, a contributing editor for Tax Analysts, every major-party nominee since 1980 has done so.

Clinton's speeches, by contrast, present a question of first impression. She is not going against the grain of common practice so much as balking at broadening the definition of what material ought to be available to the public when it comes to presidential contenders.

Still, both candidates are resisting disclosure. Both are wrong. And both are revealing a troubling attitude that can only be expected to persist and worsen in the White House.

Trump once expressed willingness to release his taxes. "I have no objection to certainly showing tax returns," he told radio host Hugh Hewitt last February.

Now, Trump is hedging. "I will absolutely give my return, but I'm being audited now for two or three years, so I can't do it until the audit is finished, obviously," he said at Thursday's CNN-Telemundo debate. "And I think people would understand that."

Um, no. First, Trump's audit excuse would not stop him from releasing tax returns covering previous years. Second, whether to release tax returns for years still being reviewed is entirely within Trump's discretion; he's the boss of his own returns. Sure, no prudent tax lawyer would be thrilled about a client making audited returns public. Tough.

...continued

swipe to next page