Bill Ayers at the White House?

That's what the visitors' logs released Friday suggested. In fact, it turned out to be a very different Ayers. But comic identity confusion is the least of the problems generated by the White House's misconceived new transparency policy, as I argue in my column today on CNN.com.

That's what the visitors'  logs released Friday suggested. In fact, it turned out to be a very different Ayers. But comic identity confusion is the least of the problems generated by the White House's misconceived new transparency policy, as I argue in my column today on CNN.com:

What the disclosure rules will do, however, is force White House staffers to waste a lot of time on useless meetings summoned for the sole purpose of generating a public record.

Imagine the administration has OK'd new rules on grazing cattle on federal land. Ranchers lined up on one side, environmentalists on the other. The ranchers won, as they usually do.

You belong to the White House communications team charged with explaining the decision. You want to book a meeting with the ranchers' association to collect some heartwarming anecdotes from them: how the pro-rancher decision saved a family farm owned by a disabled Iraq War veteran, that kind of thing.

You realize, however, that the visit with the ranchers association will show up in the published logs. The visit will expose the administration to accusations of listening only to one side. The accusations will be unfounded: The environmentalists got their hearing weeks or months ago, on Capitol Hill and at the Interior Department, where the decisions were really made. But accusations do not have to be accurate to harm the president.

Just to be on the safe side, you book a meeting with the environmentalists, too. The meeting is a total waste of time. You could not alter the decision even if you wanted to. But you go through the motions all the same -- and there's 45 minutes or an hour sliced out of the day.

And the same the next day. And the day after that...