Talk is cheap, especially when it comes to vows of greater transparency in our government.

Politicians on the right and left alike promise all of us greater access to information about how our government works — and who’s working it. But all too often, particularly after candidates win office, the vows fall to silence.

The Obama White House is heading down that very path, and just months after President Barack Obama made promise after promise about opening government up to the people. That included everything from vows to post bills online at least five days before the president signed them — often shelved, by the way — to promises not to fall into the pit of secrecy that ultimately ensnared both the Clinton and Bush administrations.

Just last Thursday, the Obama White House argued before a surprised and very skeptical federal judge that former Vice President Dick Cheney’s voluntary statements to U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald in 2004 concerning White House leaks involving CIA agent Valerie Plame were exempt from disclosure and should remain so. Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Smith insisted this testimony, if released, could set a chilling precedent, holding future presidents and vice presidents up to ridicule and impeding their willingness to cooperate in future criminal investigations.

Smith even argued that if the former vice president’s remarks were made public, a future president or vice president might balk in such investigations for fear of winding up on programs such as “The Daily Show.”

Right. In other words, we the American people shouldn’t know such things because our leaders might become the butt of TV comedy writers’ jokes.

Sadly, this appears to be part of a sorry trend in the Obama White House, quickly falling into the same arrogance of power that gripped the Clinton and Bush administrations. Already the Obama administration is arguing, in another case, that the White House visitors log isn’t public information, adopting the stance of the supersecret Bush White House.

Is this the change some people thought they were getting?

In this case, the good-government group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington — the same bunch seeking Cheney’s revelations — tried to get a look at the log to determine the identities of top coal executives visiting the White House. Presumably, this visit dealt some with clean coal technology, a subject of great importance to us the past several years in Central Texas.

Maintaining integrity and the resolve to keep government open and honest is tough business. We just hope the Obama White House hasn’t given up too quickly.