Obama’s First Few Months: Something Less Than A Seamless Transition
Obama’s First Few Months: Something Less Than A Seamless Transition
by
Ken Eliasberg
As I previously indicated, I had (and have) no desire to talk about Obama, partly out of a desire to extend him the courtesy of a honeymoon, and mostly out of a sense of real fatigue at even looking at anything to do with the Democratic Party (since its fundamental bankruptcy and consummate danger to American survival is so repugnant to me). Don’t get me wrong, at this point in time I am less than enthralled with the Republican Party — boy, are we in trouble!! However, the Obama transition has been so rife with what Bill Clinton might call “snafus” that some attention must be paid to the many mishaps of our “teleprompter” President. I’m going to divide my consideration into what, for want of a better description, I call the “P” categories, i.e. Process, Policy, and Progress. I’ll skip “Posturing” because all politicians engage in that sort of hyperbolic behavior.
Process.- Here I am concerned with the acts and events associated with thetransfer of power, i.e. the transition of one Administration to the next. And it is here, as I indicated last week, that I have been surprised — shocked might more accurately describe my reaction — and disappointed. I don’t recall any previous transition which was the occasion of so many mishaps; nor do I recall an Administration from which I least expected it, given the number of Washington politicos acting as Obama’s advisors.
First and foremost, let’s look at Obama’s staffing efforts — cabinet and lower level appointments. I have never seen more tax offenders selected for high office. While I am aware that tax avoidance is quite commonly a bipartisan undertaking there is such a thing as pushing the envelope, and here we have pushed it right over the edge. SIX— count em, SIX (that we know of, although 6 is more than enough) — of Obama’s selections ran into difficulties in this area, and 2 of them thought these difficulties were of sufficient gravity to take them out of the running (Daschle and Killefer). Who were they? Here they are:
1. Timothy Geithner — Secretary of the Treasury
Tom Daschle — Secretary of Health and Human Services
Nancy Killefer — White House Chief Performance Officer (a post
created by Obama to be Washington’s “first official waste watchdog” — apparently she wasn’t watching her own tax dog too carefully)
Ron Kirk — U.S. Trade Representative
Hilda Solis — Secrertary of Labor. Her husband had unpaid tax
liens on his business
6. Kathleen Sebelius (his most recent tax dodging appointee) —
Secretary of Health and Human Services (replacing Daschle,
who, as noted,felt his own tax problem was of sufficient
gravity to warrant removing himself for consideration for this
post — and, indeed, they were)
I haven’t checked it out, but I suspect this is a record. In fact, the Obama’a appointee’s tax avoidance problems were of such magnitude that it prompted some dark humor on the part of a late night talk show host, i.e. he observed that Obama’s collection of back taxes with respect to these tax cheats was going a long way toward stabilizing the economy.
And what I love about it is the blatant hypocrisy. Democrats love taxes; they just don’t like to pay them. They only love em when you pay em. Perhaps that’s what Margaret Thatcher had in mind when she observed that the trouble with Socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.
Daschle, who just overlooked several hundred thousand dollars of taxable income, pushes the hypocrisy envelope even further since he was outspoken on the floor of Congress in his attack on tax cheats, i.e. he observed that “[M]ake no mistake, tax cheaters cheat us all, and the IRS should enforce our laws to the letter.” Does this include Democrats, Mr. Daschle? And, of course Geithner’s problem is particularly disconcerting since he has been placed in charge of presiding over all of us taxpayers (interesting that a tax cheat should be so indispensable as to warrant his being given this charge).
There were a slew of other appointee problems — see. e.g. Richardson, Greg, Freeman et al — but I don’t want to labor this point; I have even greater concerns over those who have not been appointed and by now should have been. For a couple of columns on Obama’s other appointee problems, I recommend: Obama’s Appointment Crisis, Kathy Shaidle at FrontPageMagazine.com 3/31/09; Another Man Down, Kathy Shaidle, FrontPageMag.com 3/11/09; and All the President’s Tax Cheats, Michelle Malkin, Townhall.com 2/04/09. There are numerous other columns on this topic, but these will do. Suffice it to say that I doubt if there have ever been this number of appointment problems in any combination of previous administrations. I can barely imagine the field day the mainstream media would have if half of these vetting “snafus” had occurred under a Republican Administration.
In this latter regard, there is one last point that I cannot pass up — the contrast between the Obama transition and that of George W. Bush, the former having been labeled by his loyal acolytes as brilliant, the latter being universally condemned by his Democratic detractors as a dolt. Michelle Malkin, in her column cited above, makes this observation:
“Now, compare President Bush’s transition track record in 2001. Remember that 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-plus 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.”
This from a left-leaning think tank operative. Give me MBAs over political hacks and professorial dolts any and every day of the week!!! And please spare me any garbage about the role of MBAs with respect to our current travails; even the best among us stumble occasionally, while the Government, which also played a significant role in creating the current mess, almost never gets it right. -To be continued-