Bungle-mania: A D’OHbama Transition Progress Report
Before I get to my syndicated column today, I must remind you of an unctuous, heavy-breathing piece written by New York Times columnist David Brooks on Nov. 21 of last year. Seems like eons ago. I blogged about the bordering-on-obscene column in a post titled “Ivy League ejaculations.” Here’s a bit of Brooks’ paean to The One :
Jan. 20, 2009, will be a historic day. Barack Obama (Columbia, Harvard Law) will take the oath of office as his wife, Michelle (Princeton, Harvard Law), looks on proudly. Nearby, his foreign policy advisers will stand beaming, including perhaps Hillary Clinton (Wellesley, Yale Law), Jim Steinberg (Harvard, Yale Law) and Susan Rice (Stanford, Oxford D. Phil.).
The domestic policy team will be there, too, including Jason Furman (Harvard, Harvard Ph.D.), Austan Goolsbee (Yale, M.I.T. Ph.D.), Blair Levin (Yale, Yale Law), Peter Orszag (Princeton, London School of Economics Ph.D.) and, of course, the White House Counsel Greg Craig (Harvard, Yale Law)…
… Already the culture of the Obama administration is coming into focus. Its members are twice as smart as the poor reporters who have to cover them, three times if you include the columnists. They typically served in the Clinton administration and then, like Cincinnatus, retreated to the comforts of private life — that is, if Cincinnatus had worked at Goldman Sachs, Williams & Connolly or the Brookings Institution. So many of them send their kids to Georgetown Day School, the posh leftish private school in D.C. that they’ll be able to hold White House staff meetings in the carpool line.
And yet as much as I want to resent these overeducated Achievatrons (not to mention the incursion of a French-style government dominated by highly trained Enarchs), I find myself tremendously impressed by the Obama transition…
Most of all, they are picking Washington insiders. Or to be more precise, they are picking the best of the Washington insiders.
Obama seems to have dispensed with the romantic and failed notion that you need inexperienced “fresh faces” to change things. After all, it was L.B.J. who passed the Civil Rights Act. Moreover, because he is so young, Obama is not bringing along an insular coterie of lifelong aides who depend upon him for their well-being.
As a result, the team he has announced so far is more impressive than any other in recent memory…
…Believe me, I’m trying not to join in the vast, heaving O-phoria now sweeping the coastal haute bourgeoisie. But the personnel decisions have been superb. The events of the past two weeks should be reassuring to anybody who feared that Obama would veer to the left or would suffer self-inflicted wounds because of his inexperience. He’s off to a start that nearly justifies the hype.
– Smarty pants/panting smarty David Brooks, NYT, 11/21/08
Ick. Clearing away the overflowing drool bucket. How do you like them apples now, Mr. Brooks? The “overeducated Achievatron” president is, by his own admission, a royal screw-up. And the hits keep coming. Stefan Sharkansky gives you the scoop on incompetent-o-crat Ron Sims, who’s up for the No. 2 job at HUD. Labor Secretary nominee Hilda Solis is clueless about the policies and regulations she would oversee. ObamaNoms.com has all the latest on other brewing problems.
The Associated Press, carrying water for their dear leader, tries to convince us that Obama has been “humbled.” Bah.
Actions speak louder than words.
***
All the president’s tax cheats
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2008
You never get a second chance to make a first post-inaugural impression. Less than three weeks into his first 100 days, Barack Obama has left an indelible mark on his nascent presidency: The mark of incompetence and hubris. Despite the administration’s much-touted wealth of bright minds and high bars, the transition has been a complete disaster.
In a double whammy on Tuesday, tax troubles and ethical clouds forced the withdrawal of not one, but two, high-profile Obama nominees. These come on the heels of former Commerce Secretary nominee Bill Richardson’s withdrawal due to a pay-for-play probe in New Mexico and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s “tax goofs” involving failure to pay $43,000 in federal self-employment taxes for four separate years – until, that is, he was nominated for his Obama post. Thorough vetting, it seems, is an inconvenient process – a pesky “distraction,” if you will — in the Land of Hope and Change.
Health and Human Services Secretary designee Tom Daschle finally bowed out after aggressive rehabilitative efforts failed. His chummy Senate pals on both sides of the aisle may have been willing to forgive his failures to pay longstanding back taxes owed on limo services, undisclosed consulting fees and dubious charitable donations worth an estimated $146,000, including interest and penalties. But the American people were not. (And an interesting postscript: He may have apologized and dropped out of the administration, but Daschle still owes Medicare taxes equal to 2.9 percent of the personal value of the car service he received from his crony Democrat donor Leo Hindery Jr.)
Just before the Daschle announcement came the withdrawal of Nancy Killifer. She was tapped to be President Obama’s “Chief Performance Officer” overseeing compliance, organizational effectiveness, and waste management across every federal agency. But the former Clinton Treasury official and head of the prestigious Washington office of management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, Inc., couldn’t be bothered to manage her own household help effectively. She failed for a year and a half to pay employment taxes and had an outstanding tax lien on her home. The lien was worth less than $1,000 – far less than the tax liability Treasury Secretary Geithner owed.
If I were a left-wing feminist, I’d be sorely tempted to whip out the gender card and give the Good Old Boys’ Club a few whacks. Killifer gets thrown under the bus, but Geithner gets to drive? No justice, no peace!
Now, compare President Bush’s transition track record in 2001. Remember the traditional 100-day period was shortened as a result of the election lawsuit. Wrote Paul Light of the left-leaning Brookings Institution at the time: “Bush gets an A on the transition into office. He survived his truncated 40-day transition with only one major mistake—Linda Chavez, who withdrew her nomination for Labor Secretary after the flap over allowing an illegal immigrant to stay in her house…Bush also deserves an A+ for the timely assembly of his White House team. Building around Vice President Dick Cheney, the Bush White House is an MBA’s dream: efficient, predictable, well controlled, on time, under budget.”
During Tuesday’s press briefing, glib White House spokesman Robert Gibbs did his best to bat down a rising chorus of questions about his boss’s judgment – not only on the nomination “glitches,” but also on an ever-growing list of exemptions to Obama’s no-lobbyists pledge. Echoing Bill Clinton’s “most ethical administration ever” and Nancy Pelosi’s “most ethical House ever” mantras, Gibbs defensively asserted: “The bar that we set is the highest that any administration in the country has ever set.”
Then how, pray tell, did all the president’s tax cheats make it past the front door? And where’s Vice President Joe Biden to wag his finger at their lack of patriotism? Team Obama embraced these damaged candidates despite advanced knowledge of their lapses. Killifer’s tax lien was four years old. Questions about Daschle’s judgment have lingered for years. Ask GOP Sen. John Thune, who defeated Daschle the Dodger in 2004 after news broke of his bogus property-tax homestead exemption claim on his $1.9 million D.C. mansion – which he listed as his primary residence despite voting in South Dakota and claiming it as his primary residence in order to run for re-election.
The buck stops at the desk of Barack Obama. A little more of that humility and personal responsibility he spoke so much about during his inaugural address are now in order.
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And yet another Obama appointment has corruption problems. This time, the Number 2 man at Housing and Urban Development, Ron Sims.
If we have to breathe deeply, it’s from laughing so hard at a guy that has had to admit that he “screwed up” in his first two weeks in office. …A man who has had two potential appointees withdraw even when Democrats have an overwhelming majority in Congress.
No, this isn’t drama, it’s comedy.
Besides, you call commenters here drama queens and then talk about … The Hills?
Project much?
I’m rather confident that most everyone here has no idea about what you’re blathering. If you’re using an MTV “reality” show as your point of reference, you’re reaching.
Obama: a novice
Biden: a clown
Pelosi: a box of rox
Reid: a wimp
Schumer: a swindler
Geithner: a cheat
Rangel: a liar and a cheat
Holder: a traitor
…and the list goes on and on.
What I find amusing is a sub-headline from one of the WaPo’s front-page stories: “Some See Failed Nomination as Harbinger of Change”
Talk about spin………
Huggybear. The hills? What is that? Is it a show that people who get thier news from the comedy channel would watch???
[emph. mine]
Actually, that’s not true. Ron Sims was the King County Executive and Paul Schell was mayor of Seattle during the WTO craziness.
That aside, I agree he is an incompetent and has no business anywhere near a major decision that effects the lives of others.
I think the drama queen is the guy screaming to the media that we face economic “Catastrophe” if the senate doesn’t pass his massive porkulus bill.
Unless their football team rocks…
Family Man, RE: #5, agreed.
Also responded to you here.
Well they had to set it high, wouldnt want these highly educated fools hitting their heads on it as they go under it now would we.
Wow. Talk about “drama.” “seething partisan outrage”? How about a careful delineation of the facts delivered with APPROPRIATE disgust? Even Obama had the good grace to admit that it was a “screw up.”
What some of us on the Right notice now, though, is that Obama can “screw up” and it’s OK. Any mention of consecutive bungling as an indicator of Obama’s competence is “drama” but when Bush pronounced “nuclear” incorrectly, it was evidence that he was a hopeless incompetent, way out of his depth and in over his head.
It’s the double standard that is so utterly frustrating. Remember all the talk about inadequate vetting of Sarah Palin? And over what? Because she held the line on her rogue trooper ex-brother-in-law? Yet Obama puts forward a man for HHS secretary (the very well known Tom Daschle, by the way, so it’s not like some unknown) who was behind in taxes to the tune of approx $150,000.00??? Add to that a Treasury Secretary who is also behind in taxes. Yet, for us to notice is “drama”??
Talk about a bold display of RHIP (”Rank Has Its Privileges”)!!
You know the saying, “Who you gonna believe? Me or your lying eyes?”!!
I’m waiting for Sandy Burglar to be named to head the FBI.
Point out the obvious problems with “The One” and look at the troll bath we end up swimming in. UGH
Great column Michelle. You should keep a running list of his D’OH’s on the site somewhere.
Ron Sims invented the game “duck,duck, goose” with the homeless camps moving them into suburban neighborhoods and spreading the wealth, so to speak, one day you live in a nice neighborhood – the next day, it looks like downtown!
Good ammendments… still a horrid bill. I don’t want it even with the ammendments.
Ooops. Wrong thread… my bad.
If it were anyone else, I would say this administration would be over in 4 years, guaranteed. But the democrats are playing for keeps and have no intention of giving up power under any circumstances. Besides, from their point of view, screw-ups are just fine — the worse things get the better. As I’ve noted before, we may have elections in 2010, but I really have my doubts about 2012.
Whenever I think of Obama, I’m reminded of that scene in Bonny and Clyde when Bonny tells Clyde afterward: “You’re quite a salesman. Too bad you got nothing to sell.”
In Chicago Style Politics everything the “One” is doing is “humility and personal responsibility”!
Hope is not a plan, and not all change is good. You’d think that President Obama would have done something about it by now. Instead, he’s appointing lobbyists, tax cheats, and ideologs, and backing a “porkulus” bill that reads more like a leftist’s wet dream.
ECS
Smoking!
What a great skewering of the new administration.
All truth, nothing but net!!!
Kudos!!!
Joe Biden said it was our patriotic duty to pay maximum amounts of tax to the US treasury. Will anyone in the MSM ask Biden if Geitner was unpatriotic when he tried to take tax credits for sending his kids to summer camp? Was Geitner unpatriotic when he tried to avoid paying any taxes that were beyond the statute of limitations? When Daschle claimed that a car and driver given to him by his employer were “gifts” rather than “income in kind?”
Somehow I doubt it.
It seems the only reason the Obama administration has set “the bar…the highest that any administration in the country has ever set” is because it is too arrogant to bow down as it ducks underneath that bar.
They’re only looking for clearance, not clarity.
“Tax cheats, hopechange, Clintonites, oh my!”
Obama’s stacking the Department of Justice with RIAA lawyers. You know, the people that sue grannys and dead people for crimes they couldn’t possibly commit. I’m guessing they’ll be coming after us for IRS tax payments we haven’t missed.