One of those pundits on CNN yesterday was talking about how involved a certain segment of the community — namely, young African-Americans — were going to feel about this Obama presidency, and how he saw it as a very real possibility that they would hurry home to turn on the news and take a real interest in politics. Personally, I think that’s a stretch for a large percentage of kids, teens, and young adults, regardless of race, but I think if there’s any administration that has a chance of not only engendering but continuing such a level of interest, it’s this one.

From The Miami Herald:

Later, Obama announced during remarks at a swearing-in ceremony for White House staff and Cabinet officials that he’d freeze the pay of White House employees who make more than $100,000 a year. He told his senior staff that given the economic climate, “it’s what’s required of you at this moment.”

He signed two executive orders and three memoranda to implement the pay freeze, ethics and public records changes.

The executive order on ethics prohibits executive branch employees from accepting gifts from lobbyists. It prohibits anyone who works for the administration to leave and lobby the executive branch “for as long as I am president,” Obama said. It also precludes lobbyists hired by his administration from dealing with agencies on matters they lobbied about for two years.

A second order revokes an executive order signed by former President George W. Bush in 2001 that limited release of former presidents’ records, and replaces it with new language aimed at more transparency. Obama’s order could expand public access to the records of Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney, as well as other former leaders, in the years to come, said Steven Aftergood, the director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists.

So far, it’s a good move. In fact, after all the secrecy and the cloak-and-dagger stuff of the last eight years, I think this is absolutely the best first day anyone could have hoped for: this, indeed, is change I can believe in.

But, of course, we’re not even two full days into the new administration. There’s always talk, and today there’s been some action, but there is always the possibility that these changes could slip away. Obama talks the talk about being accountable, but it isn’t enough to take him at his word — we, the voters, the citizens of this country, those of us who voted for him, those of us who didn’t, it’s our job to make sure he walks the walk.

So I hope that pundit’s vision of an involved America is true. And I hope it thrives throughout the Obama Administration and continues to his successor and beyond. A citizen’s responsibility extends well beyond walking into a voting booth every other year.