Candidate Obama was either exceptionally naive or willfully disingenuous when he vowed to change the way Washington works. The very promise of Hope and Change was rooted in uprooting the Washington modus operandi. But instead of rejecting it, he embraced it all - the secrecy, the closed doors, the political favors, the near-criminal negligence.

This quote is saying that President Obama was either too inexperienced or being dishonest when he made a pledge to change the way government works in Washington. He wanted to replace how Washington usually did things with a new way of doing things. But instead of changing the system, he actually kept the same manipulated and deceitful practices like keeping things hidden from the public, making decisions behind closed doors, trading political favors and ignoring serious problems.