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Some People Are Missing from the Obama Administration
I’m glad that someone in a major news organization has finally noticed this:
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.
He sent Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to Africa to talk about international development but does not have anyone running the Agency for International Development. He has invited major powers to a summit on nuclear nonproliferation but does not have an assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation. He has vowed to improve government efficiency but does not have the chief performance officer he promised.
“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. “The notion of the American will — it’s not being thwarted, but it’s slow to come to fruition.”
Sandy Levinson remarks that you would never have seen a situation like under George W. Bush, and he is absolutely right:
… I don’t know if this can properly be counted as more evidence of our dysfunctional constitution or not, but does it really matter? Here we are, with multiple challenges and even crises, and vital positions are unfilled. Take the job that most readers of Balkinziation are probably most familiar with, the head of the Office Legal Counsel. Obama is to be commended for nominating Dawn Johnson. He is, if not to be condemned, than at least to be severely criticized, for, so far as I can discern, exhibiting not a scintilla of backbone in trying to break the absolutely outrageous Republican hold on her nomination. (I am curious if any deals were made to get Harold Koh’s confirmation by further allowing Dawn Johnson to be put on the back burner.) I find myself asking “what would George W. Bush have done,” and the answer is that he would have made a recess appointment as Congress traipses off for a six-week vacation (and, of course, the Obamas are off to Martha’s Vineyard). Now there are all sorts of problems with recess appointments, and I think they are generally unwise. So it’s probably for the best that Obama hasn’t done it. But Bush’s allies would have been raising the roof, as they did with, say, John Bolton and other egregious nominees (from my point of view). Where are the liberal equivalents of the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal? Is Dawn Johnson another casualty either of the misguided search for bipartisanship in a Senate constituted, in significant measure of mad-dog Republicans, or is she simply being [sacrificed] because of the belief that Charles Grassley (or God know whom) has to be appeased in order to pick up a Republican vote for medical reform? Eric Holder has apparently said that her confirmation is one of his “top priorities.” One can only wonder what effort the Administration is putting into things that aren’t at the top of its list. …
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23 Responses to “Some People Are Missing from the Obama Administration”
And we are all the better for it. It's a symbol of Obama's inexperience that he cannot vet his appointees…talking about recess appointments is ridiculous. If he wouldn't keep nominating people with tax problems then he wouldn't be short-handed.
Another sign of an inexperienced candidate. There is a reason that senators who have never run companies or had executive experience make bad presidents. Obamas inexperience shows up more and more every day.
Does anybody know what happened to the Democratic Presidency and the large Democratic majorities in Congress?
Maybe they held an election I didn't know about? Sorry I missed that.
I give you a big vacancy, there has been no appointment of an Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Surprizing for an administration with healthcare at the top of its agenda wouldn't you say?
rfyork
:” Does anybody know what happened to the Democratic Presidency and the large Democratic majorities in Congress?”
They ran out of political capital when the deficit numbers came in.
You should look up how the budget process is doing. It is about six weeks until the start of the new budget year and Congress has not passed a single budget bill. It looks like all of them are stuck in conference committee. http://thomas.loc.gov/home/approp/app10.html About half of not even made it out of the Senate. Congress wants to micromanage healthcare and they cannot even do what the Constitution requires of them.
@ Superdestroyer
what do you call this?
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:hr1105:
dude1394,
And it can equally be said that Republicans are holding up the nomination process as well. In this political climate for a minority party, every battle is fought to the end. So I'm not surprised. And if McCain were POTUS, Democrats would be doing the same thing.
dude1394, “It's a symbol of Obama's inexperience that he cannot vet his appointees…”
Haha that's interesting. I guess you'd also agree that George W. Bush wasn't experienced because after running companies, being governor of Texas and president for years he still could not vet his appointments the three that come immediately to mind are:
Bernie Kerik, who Bush nominated in Dec. 2004 (after the Nov. 2004 election) as Dept. of Homeland Security but withdrew because he had hired an illegal immigrant;
Harriet Miers, who Bush nominated to the Supreme Court in 2005 but withdrew because she was such an idiot that not even Republicans supported her;
Linda Chavez, as Secretary of Labor in 2001 but had to withdraw because of her association and support of an illegal immigrant who lived with her.
But of course despite Bush's mistakes his companies did exceedingly well, the economy of the US took off, Americans are earning much more money now, American businesses are really competitive in the global marketplace, our rights as US citizens have been protected and promoted and the shrinking national debt and budget surpluses left by Clinton continued until America now has no debt and we're floating in the money.
Oh, except for a few pesky minor details that Republicans conveniently forget… none of that is true. As far as Bush's companies- he had to be bailed out by his daddy and friends. Didn't at least one of his companies actually go bankrupt? Oh and speaking of blowing money that was given to him to help his companies… that's exactly what Bush did with the surplus of the Clinton years- he blew it on tax breaks for the rich, who pay a much lower tax rate than the middle class. And Bush left a gigantic $11 trillion dollar debt along with two wars and souring diplomatic relations with our most important allies. Oh and let's not forget that stock market that teh GOP hammered Obama on shortly after he took office. Under Bush the Dow last about 25% of its value…. Wow. That's some record. And for the stock market to go down 25% after eight years of Republican rule, rule by the “business party”… that's…. I don't even have a word for it.
Anyway, yes, we all knew that Obama would make mistakes as he came up to speed as a new president and to be fair every president has made mistakes.
But what's Bush's excuse for continuing to make the same mistakes over and over after years of experience as a business man and then gov. of Texas? And for running the country into the ground and leaving a $11 trillion national debt and two wars?
@ T_Steel
Fair enough Leonidas. Personally I think the White House is working with too much on their plates and aren't quick enough on their feet regarding appointing people. How this will shake out in the coming months will be interesting.
I totally agree, but it was a political calculation I think, they wanted to maximize the honeymoon period of the “Historic presidency” and ram through as much as they could quickly. Thus all the rhetoric about the need to pass the Stimulas before a catastrophy or “Armageddon” struck, the ramming though of the Omnibus bill, and now the effort with Healthcare that they tried to get through before the August recess, which they bumped up ahead of climate change when they starrted to see approval numbers dipping in the polls so they could get the harder item passed while the magic was still there.
The consequences include not having people in some important positions in government and them having to be trained into the second year of the presidency.
From Hot Air
” As far as Bush's companies- he had to be bailed out by his daddy and friends. Didn't at least one of his companies actually go bankrupt?”
Nope it didn't. As a matter a fact he didn't use his daddy's money to start a company either. He started an exploration company and in the early 80's that had financial trouble like every small oil related company. There were several mergers with the resulting company being bought out by a company owned in part (33%) by George Soros, hardly “his daddy and friends”.
“for the rich, who pay a much lower tax rate than the middle class.”
Dude are you nuts? Google is your friend, at least it will keep you from embarrassing yourself with amazingly ignorant posts.
I read that there are a lot of exhausted people working for Obama right now. The constant push push push, while being obviously undermanned, might be the source of the missteps we've seen by the WH in regards to health care reform.
It looks like Obama went to war with the Army he had, not the Army he should have had.
Nice to see the author being a little criticial of Obama for a change
” the rich, who pay a much lower tax rate than the middle class.”
Yup thats a pretty silly thing to post. Hey StockBoySF, when you and those in your bracket pay more in income taxes than 95% of the people below you in income and are happy about it, then you can come back and tell us all about those evil rich people.
A couple of points:
1) I would think any conservative would applaud Obama for not filling these positions. Every one of them have six figure salaries, so every day they go unfilled saves us..millions?
2) There is, or should be, more to the appointment process than just getting a butt in a chair. Sure, Bush got people in there quickly…and many of them were total flops (Remember “Heckuva Job Brownie?”). It may hinder him, but having unqualified persons in those positions could hinder him even more. Imagine if he just randomly picked students from Liberty University to hand out millions of dollars with no oversight!
3) I wonder how much of his search has been slowed by his desire not to have former lobbyists in his administration (yes, we know he made a few very notable exceptions).
Sorry TH…odds are that the people responsible for filling these positions are too busy working on higher priority issues.
Maybe he needs to expand the scope of his efforts beyond tax cheats and activism figureheads.
“Surprising for an administration with healthcare at the top of its agenda wouldn't you say?”
Not when you have Top Bureaucrats on Whom to Have Faith, called “czars.”
Mere figureheads, for the most part, but that's what Symbolism (rather than substance) is about.
“I read that there are a lot of exhausted people working for Obama right now. The constant push push push, while being obviously undermanned, might be the source of the missteps we've seen by the WH in regards to health care reform.”
The rushing is compounded by ineptitude (of which experimentation or aimlessness rather than deliberation and purposefulness is included). It's simply worse than ever with health care; it was bad from the start. There is a definite sense there of “Yippee! We won! Let's play 'government' and 'nation'!”)
“talking about recess appointments is ridiculous”
Yes, to normal people. However, consider that the response to the ever growing discontent with the health care effort, that is so bad that even now a number of Dems have second thoughts about more mindless rushing to pass bad legislation, is to insist on something similar, to misuse the legislative process to ram legislation wrongly past the legitimate opposition, which includes Dems and which is addressed by reducing the number of votes needed in the Senate from a range of sixty to only fifty. I.e., perhaps ten Democrats as well as the Republicans actually are viewed as being needing to be bypassed, potentially.
In addition to procedural mischief like the foregoing threat, the Obama adminstration is experimenting and not seeing itself subject to much, if any, constraints (or legitimacy, it seems). There's no need for them, it appears, to fill and use the formal, proper position in the federal government for health care services when they have a substitute like Tom Daschle in another role equally ready — though it's more complex, yes, but there's no telling if Daschle or other, unnamed (unrevealed, secreted) people are making those decisions instead.
[...] Some People Are Missing from the Obama Administration | The Moderate Voice themoderatevoice.com/44199/some-people-are-missing-from-the-obama-administration – view page – cached I’m glad that someone in a major news organization has finally noticed this: As President Obama tries to turn around a summer of setbacks, he finds himself — From the page [...]
[...] it’s amazing that he’s way behind in hiring for key administration positions (H/T The Moderate Voice) While career employees or holdovers fill many posts on a temporary basis, Mr. Obama does not have [...]