Just "Winging It"?

At first I thought I was the only one that noticed. Then a few co-workers made mention of it. Now even the blogosphere has taken notice, as has the Wall Street Journal.

Is the Obama Administration just 'winging it' or do they actually have a plan? It appears to me it's the former, not the latter. There have been too many 'retrenchments', too many campaign promises broken for expedience sake.

...the administration has scored a major legislative victory in an extraordinarily short period of time. Less than 700 hours after taking the oath of office, President Barack Obama signed the largest spending bill in American history.

Nevertheless, this fast start can't overcome a growing sense the administration is winging it on issues large and small.

Take the vetting of cabinet nominees. Mr. Obama's aides ignored a federal investigation of New Mexico's Gov. Bill Richardson that started last August for a possible pay-for-play scandal. Mr. Richardson had to withdraw after being named to become secretary of commerce.

The administration treated as inconsequential the failure of its choices for Treasury secretary and White House performance officer, as well as its labor secretary-designate's spouse, to pay taxes.

Team Obama promised Gen. Anthony Zinni he'd be ambassador to Iraq, then cut him loose without explanation. After the Bill Richardson fiasco, it romanced Republican Sen. Judd Gregg for commerce secretary -- then ignored his advice on the stimulus and wouldn't trust him with running the department, moving supervision of the Census into the White House.

It isn't a healthy sign when the administration can't seem to make up its mind, can't do a decent job of vetting nominees, and expects some nominees to go against everything they believe in just to get a Cabinet post. It seems the Obama Administration has divorced itself from reality. Obama was elected to govern, but it has become apparent he may be incapable of doing so. As I've written more than once, Obama is very good at getting elected. But he's never really had to do anything once he got into office. This time it's different. He has to perform. He has to lead. And that's his problem.

Passing an almost $800 billion, pork-filled 'stimulus' package doesn't take much thought, particularly when you hand off the actual authorship of the bill to the most partisan, socialist, closet-fascists members of the Democratic majority Congress. That's not leadership, it's laziness. It's the administration voting 'present'.

The people voted for “change”. They're going to get it.

But they aren't going to like it.