"Fire? What Fire?"

There is an ongoing question as to whether Obama’s abject failure to even begin to deal with the economic crisis is due to incompetence (including the fact that the Dear Leader is apparently overwhelmed by the requirements of his first real job) or malevolence (in other words, as Doug Ross outlined in this post, he’s doing it on purpose).  Two bits of evidence from this morning’s web browsing add weight to the malice aforethought / mens rea position.

First, Ed Morrissey at Hot Air actually identifies by title the seventeen (17) positions in the Treasury Department  “that require White House appointment and Senate confirmation” for whom the White House has not nominated anyone!  The worst economic crisis in modern times, and positions like Deputy Secretary of the Treausry (which appears to be the second most powerful position in the department), Under Secretary for Domestic Finance, Assistant Secretary for Financial Markets, Inspector General, General Counsel and even Treasurer are not only not filled, but candidates have not even been proposed.

So what has Team Obama been doing instead of staffing Treasury?  As Karl Rove reports in today’s Wall Street Journal, they’ve been busy coordinating the attack on Rush Limbaugh:

White House senior adviser David Axelrod explicitly authorized the assault. Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel assigned a White House official to coordinate the push. And Press Secretary Robert Gibbs gleefully punched the launch button at his podium, suckering the White House press corps into dropping what they were doing to get Mr. Limbaugh.

Oh, and they’ve also been terribly busy meeting “for two hours each Wednesday evening to digest their latest polling and focus-group research”, according to Rove.

Hope and Change!

UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal here and Jim Geraghty at The Campaign Spot / National Review Online here are reporting that H. Rodgin Cohen, the leading candidate for Deputy Treasury Secretary, has withdrawn his name from consideration.  The WSJ story adds, “Mr. Cohen is the latest in a string of candidates to drop out of the running for senior positions in the over-worked and thinly staffed department.  Others include Annette Nazareth, a former SEC commissioner, who was previously expected to be tapped as deputy Treasury secretary, and Lee Sachs, who was thought to be a candidate for undersecretary for domestic finance.”

Something is desperately wrong in this Administration.  God help us if this is the situation in any of the departments or agencies charged with keeping us safe.