UNBELIEVABLE - AT 6:15 P.M. ET:  Well, we must praise The New York Times - rare here - for a hard-hitting piece on the gross negligence of the Obama administration in filling key policy posts.  The numbers here are staggering, and they point to an incompetence administration run more like the Chicago political machine than the United States Government.  No surprise there:

WASHINGTON — As President Obama tries to turn around a summer of setbacks, he finds himself still playing without most of his own team. Seven months into his presidency, fewer than half of his top appointees are in place advancing his agenda.

Of more than 500 senior policymaking positions requiring Senate confirmation, just 43 percent have been filled so far — a reflection of a White House that grew more cautious after several nominations blew up last spring, a Senate that is intensively investigating nominees and a legislative agenda that has consumed both.

The sluggish pace has kept Mr. Obama from having his own people enacting programs central to his mission. He is trying to fix the financial markets but does not have an assistant treasury secretary for financial markets. He is spending more money on transportation than anyone since Dwight D. Eisenhower but does not have his own inspector general watching how the dollars are used. He is fighting two wars but does not have an Army secretary.

Will you go to bed tonight more confident that your security is in good hands?  No, I didn't think so.

“If you’re running G.M. without half your senior executives in place, are you worried? I’d say your stockholders would be going nuts,” said Terry Sullivan, a professor at the University of North Carolina and executive director of the White House Transition Project, which tracks appointments.

Of course the piece does, as is required, throw some barbs at President Bush.  What would a New York Times story be without that?  But the point is clear:  This administration is functioning on half its cylinders. 

Change we can't believe in.

August 23, 2009