WEDNESDAY WAS the official start of the truly ugly infighting and backstabbing as original supporters and latecomers joust for top positions in the new administration. The lists are circulating, and the usual suspects are being rounded up.
The White House has in its gift more than 3,300 presidential job appointments. About half - 1,600 - are "schedule C" jobs, which include entry-level positions and some senior policy posts, that would go to some of the tens of thousands of people expected to send CVs. They'll file them to internet job sites that both transition teams have established.
About 700 positions are for non-career senior executive service members, generally highly skilled people - policy wonks, managers, financial officers - who will come from the private sector or academia into agencies for specific tasks.
The really nasty battles are often reserved for the 300 or so presidential appointee slots, the top White House jobs, such as the national security council - and especially for the 400 cabinet and sub-cabinet jobs that require Senate confirmation. The 400 do not include almost 200 US attorneys and marshals, federal judges, and about 200 ambassadors.
Because of a new project by a non-profit, non-partisan body, the Council for Excellence in Government, there will be no reason for surprise over how trying the process will be.
The council's presidential appointee roadmap, soon to be fully online for the first time, with lots of links to a wealth of government material, provides one-stop shopping for the answers to almost any question about any job.
But applicants will have to ask themselves some serious questions: do you seriously think you are qualified for this job? Do you have adequate clout with the right people? Are you a close friend of insiders who can get you the job? And, most important, can you verify the precise day that you switched from Hillary to Barack? What about all those years you "forgot" to pay taxes? Think they won't find out about that? Or the illegal nanny?
- (LA Times-Washington Post)