Obama's Vetting Process, or Lack Thereof

What is going on over there at Chez Obama? Do his people know what a vetting process truly entails? I've seen kids get a more thorough going-over to get a job at The Gap.

First Bill Richardson withdraws as Commerce Secretary because he is part of an ongoing corruption investigation in his home state of New Mexico. Oops.

Then Timothy Geithner gets tripped up on his waltz to confirmation as Treasury Secretary because he failed to pay taxes. Big oops.

Next, we have Nancy Killefer, who withdraws her nomination for Chief Performance Officer at the White House because she didn't pay taxes for her nanny. (Didn't we go this route with a Clinton nominee years back?) This is also embarrassing, but maybe not so much because this post was newly created and no one was really sure what Killefer's job was going to be anyway, other than to add another glorious layer of bureaucracy to a bureaucrat-heavy administration.

But the kicker has to be the withdrawal of Tom Daschle, nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services. Daschle's march back from the political wilderness was stopped but cold by, yep, not paying taxes. Daschle said he withdrew because he felt he could not be effective in the post with all the controversy surrounding his nomination. Funny, I never thought he would have been effective regardless of the controversy.