Empty Seats

The New York Times notices that a lot of senior administration positions remain unfilled, and mostly blames it on the vetting process:

While career employees or holdovers fill many posts on a temporary basis, Mr. Obama does not have his own people enacting programs central to his mission. He is trying to fix the financial markets but does not have an assistant treasury secretary for financial markets. He is spending more money on transportation than anyone since Dwight D. Eisenhower but does not have his own inspector general watching how the dollars are used. He is fighting two wars but does not have an Army secretary.

He sent Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to Africa to talk about international development but does not have anyone running the Agency for International Development. He has invited major powers to a summit on nuclear nonproliferation but does not have an assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation.

The story quotes Paul Light, a frequent source around these parts to explain why acting officials don't have as much authority, which, of course, makes sense: placeholders are always going to be reluctant, and rightly so, to institute dramatic change. But the authors don't consider whether the career officials holding those positions might actually be more than capable of doing them on a permanent basis. The vetting process is broken, but so is the system that requires the president to fill that many jobs, with no clear reason why those positions should be of the President's party. Obviously, it makes sense for individual administrations to want to set the general direction of policy. But you don't have to go that deep in an org chart to set that course.