Corruption under the Obama Administration - Research Paper Example

His presidency emphasizes that all races in America, provided they are citizens of the United States, can become the President of the nation. Unfortunately, what can spoil the proud image of the Obama government is its supposed association with corruption. Are the reports on corruption under the Obama government reliable? We must define what corruption means. Deflem (1995, 243) provides a good definition: “Corruption…is a colonization of social relations in which two or more actors undertake an exchange relation by way of a successful transfer of the steering media of money or power, thereby sidestepping the legally prescribed procedure to regulate the relation.

Two types of corruption of corruption are identified: monetary and bureaucratic. In monetary corruption, the exchange relation is carried out by way of a transfer of money, and in bureaucratic corruption by way of a transfer of power. Both types of corruption can circumvent regulations spelled out by legitimate or systemic law.” The Deflem (1995) definition of corruption has three characteristics. First, corruption may involve financial or power concessions and not only monetary consideration.

Second, corruption involves sidestepping legal procedures. Finally or third, corruption circumvents the regulations of government. It follows, therefore, that corruption need not always involve evidence of money transfer and that sidestepping of legally prescribed procedures or circumvention of legal or administrative rules are manifestations of corruption. Adopting the Deflem (1995) definition therefore, we have good basis to argue that the Obama presidency is characterized by corruption. The indicative facts are described in our succeeding discussion.

First, the Washington-based Judicial Watch, an institution generally-recognized in America as a watchdog of sound governance reported that the Obama administration has installed “personal advisors in czar positions in the White House and has created new czar positions elsewhere in the Executive Branch” that are “unconfirmed by the Senate and are largely unaccountable to Congress” (2011, 3). The word “czar” is “informally associated with presidential appointees who oversee certain government policies” (Judicial Watch 2011, 6).

The Judicial Watch (2011, 3) added that many of the activities of the said czars “are often outside the reach of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), creating a veil of secrecy about their precise role in the administration.” This implies that many of the appointees of the Obama administration are above the law and this can provide evidence that signs of corruption if not corruption itself are pervasive in the Obama administration. At the very least, the Judicial Watch Report indicated that many of the top officials of the Obama government are outside the law, are not transparent, and pose a threat that the wide-scale prevalence of the transfers of money as well as power is only a matter of time in the United States.

Under the United States Constitution, presidential nominees have to be confirmed by the United Senate (Judicial Watch 2011, 6). In contrast, many of the White House advisors are not only unconfirmed by United States Senate but they also often claim exemptions from the Freedom of In