Pervious Presidents have used this power to shield specific matters when they thought they could get away with it.

Bush is setting a general policy of not sharing any information at all*.

This falls in with Bush's pattern of strangling all information flow from the White House.

Bush's policy in this regards is very bad for the country in the long run. Democracy depends on the flow of information.

Jay

*While of course leaving themselves a hole to hand out information when it suits them.