WHY SARAH PALIN WAS THE ONLY QUALIFIED CANDIDATE:

Obama's White House: Big posts, overlapping tasks (CHARLES BABINGTON, 1/28/09, Associated Press)

President Barack Obama is building a White House staff so loaded with big names and overlapping duties that it could collapse into chaos unless managed with a juggler's skill.

It's an administration that seems "addicted to czars," says one longtime observer of government organization.

Obama has installed a White House health czar who doubles as secretary of Health and Human Services. The State Department now has "special envoys" for the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and for climate change — areas already overseen by other officials.

Just for the environment, along with the new climate envoy Obama has an energy secretary, an Environmental Protection Agency director and a chief of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Hovering over them all is Carol Browner, a high-profile former EPA administrator in a newly created role some call "climate czarina."

The economic team is perhaps the most multilayered and ego-driven of all.

Of course, if he had the experience that running such a complex organization would require he wouldn't have made it so comvoluted to begin with. This is how a legislator is to be expected to try governing...badly.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 28, 2009 1:32 PM