Posted by
Always To The Right on Wednesday, February 04, 2009 10:13:00 PM
Ever since the election, the media has tried to convince us that
Barack Obama’s transition effort was unparalleled in history. They
heaped praise on him for having picked his Cabinet before his
inauguration, as if that had never happened before, and for setting a
clear path for their confirmations, as though a Democratic Senate would
create much of a hurdle. Since the inauguration, though, a series of
errors ranging from technological (e-mail and phone systems) to key
personnel have grabbed headlines and shown Barack Obama as a bumbler in
his honeymoon period.
Will the media quit fawning over Obama now? At least they’re starting to notice
Clearly, the Obama transition team doesn’t do its homework. The tax
problems of all three, including Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner,
should have been caught months ago, especially for a transition team
and effort as highly praised as this one. The investigation into Bill
Richardson came to light last August. Didn’t anyone bother to even
Google these candidates? Worse, even after the tax problems came to
light, Obama acted as if it meant nothing until it became obvious that
he was the only person in the country who didn’t understand how it
looked to put tax cheats in charge of major federal bureaucracies.
And how do we know that the rest of Obama’s appointments are clean?
After all, Obama promised a new era of government free of conflicts of
interest, and then in two weeks appointed at least 13 lobbyists to key
positions within his administration, including Daschle, who avoided
registering as one. After months of demonizing lobbyists, Obama has
quickly found ways to jump into bed with them, compounding the optics
of cheerleading for tax cheats.