No. Money is the mother's milk of politics, and secrecy is the favorite dessert of bureaucracies.

Much of why W, Obama, etc. want the Patriot Act is to have power to catch the bad guys so that they, W, Obama, etc., won't get blamed. Indeed if a president doesn't defend the Patriot Act, the NSA, etc. and there is another Boston bomber, then some people will try to sell the charge that "The president is soft on terrorism." So, a president will want to defend the Patriot Act, etc. right up until the Supreme Court strikes down the act. Then a president will say that he did all he could to protect us against the bad guys, and the part of government soft on terrorism was the Supreme Court or just say that the Supreme Court showed us what we have to do to defend the Constitution.

A politician wants to avoid chances that opponents could say that the politician was to blame. Generally politicians get an A+ in CYA.

Generally the hope that a politician will be more responsible is a well informed citizenry making their opinions heard. That's why here on HN I'm putting out there that my view is that we need to protect the Constitution; the Patriot Act, etc. and the NSA have been trashing the Constitution; it's not worth trashing the Constitution to catch Boston wackos with pressure cookers; so, let's get the NSA, etc. back within the Constitution and otherwise do what we can with Boston police, the FBI, etc. about Boston wackos. Indeed, the Russians told us that the Boston bombers were dangerous wackos, and still we didn't do enough.

One more point is that so far a few wacko Muslims have caused us to suffer over 4000 deaths among our soldiers, tens of thousands of serious casualties among our soldiers, blow ballpark $3 trillion (net present value) of our money, and trash the Constitution. We've taken a sucker punch. We need to find some ways to get more security per unit of effort.