Obama's Vetting Disaster

Nothing to Shocking here and to be quite frank if not for the lap dogs in the media this admin would be tagged as utterly incompetent. People who talk about the magnificent campaign Obama ran seem to forget he had a media more focused on Sarah Palin's family and her wardrobe then on whether Obama was qualified to take over the Presidency, clearly he was not.

Pejman Yousefzadeh
During the 2008 campaign, it seemed whenever someone–anyone–demonstrated the temerity to question whether then-Senator Obama had the executive experience to be the President of the United States, such a question would be met with a chorus of disapproval and outrage on the part of Obamaphiles. After all, reasoned the future President’s ardent fans, the Obama campaign itself was a splendidly run operation and was a testament to Barack Obama’s executive management skills. Surely, running the country would not be that much more difficult.

We are reminded now that indeed it is. Verily, we are reminded that running the country is significantly more difficult than running a campaign.

2009 is the anti-2008 for Team Obama. Whereas, last year, the Obama campaign was able to demonstrate its supreme competence at running a campaign, raising money, and using technology to further Barack Obama’s political goals and personal ambitions, once Team Obama moved into the White House, it seemed that its hold on managerial competence disappeared. Thus, we have a Treasury Secretary whose tax delinquencies were not discovered by the Obama vetting system, and who is Home Alone at the Treasury Department because the White House can’t get its nominees confirmed quickly enough to provide the Treasury Secretary the personnel support he needs to deal with the greatest economic crisis since the recession of the early 1980s. The White House’s initial choice for HHS Secretary, Tom Daschle, was himself eliminated because of tax delinquencies. Because of the multiple problems with nominees running into tax problems, the responsibility for vetting over tax issues became concentrated in the White House Counsel’s Office . . . only to discover that White House Counsel Greg Craig has his own tax problems. Two Commerce Secretaries have been forced to withdraw their nominations. Only now is the Senate turning its attention to confirming the nomination of Ron Kirk as U.S. Trade Representative. And in the latest personnel snafu, the selection of Charles Freeman as the Chairman of the National Intelligence Counsel has been withdrawn.

Lets add to his list:

• You also the sheer incompetence in hiring then firing Anthony Zinni.
• You also have an energy secretary who doesn't know anything about energy policy.
• In addition Clinton has flown around the world and embarrassed herself and this country through dumb comments such as climate change is more important than human rights, (Richard Gere is in denial over that one) and hitting the "reset" button with Russia.
• Pannetta at the CIA who had no intelligence experience but plenty at lobbying
• An Attorney General who called the Country Cowards

The best way to judge a leader is by the people he surrounds himself with, in that regards Obama is found lacking.

Yousefzadeh's conclusion:

It was said of Barack Obama and his coterie that they were the very embodiment of competence. Now we see that the President and his White House are, in fact, exceedingly poor judges of personalities. Far too many appointment snafus have occurred to place much trust in this President’s ability to choose responsible and inspiring public servants to people his Administration. Consider the words of Machiavelli:

Of no little importance to a prince is his choice of ministers, who are good or bad according to the prince’s intelligence. In forming an opinion about a ruler’s brains, the first thing is to look at the men he has around him, for when they are adequate and loyal he can be considered prudent, because he recognizes those who are competent and keeps them loyal. When they are otherwise, the prince is always to be estimated low, because the first error he makes, he makes in choosing advisers.

One can readily conclude of Barack Obama that he is an intelligent man. But based on “the [people] he has [tried to have] around him,” and the “first error” he has made in selecting those people, one cannot help but fear the second, third, fourth, and fifth errors to come.