Michelle Malkin: Obama’s team is corrupt

In her new book, “Culture of Corruption,” Michelle Malkin says that President Barack Obama has had dozens of corrupt dealings. An excerpt.

Introduction: All hail the achievatrons!
Phew. Janitors in newsrooms across America worked overtime in the halcyon days after Barack Obama won the presidency. It wasn’t easy cleaning the drool off laptops and floors in the offices of journalists covering the Greatest Transition in World History.

New York Times columnist David Brooks laid claim to the most soaked keyboard and stained carpet in the business. He praised Team Obama’s “open-minded individuals” and “admired professionals.” He raved about their “postpartisan rhetoric” and “practical creativity.” And — ooooh-la-la! — how about the brains of all those brainy brainiacs? So smokin’ hot:

This truly will be an administration that looks like America, or at least that slice of America that got double 800s on their SATs. Even more than past administrations, this will be a valedictocracy — rule by those who graduate first in their high school classes. If a foreign enemy attacks the United States during the Harvard-Yale game any time over the next four years, we’re screwed.

Already the culture of the Obama administration is coming into focus. Its members are twice as smart as the poor reporters who have to cover them, three times if you include the columnists. They typically served in the Clinton administration and then, like Cincinnatus, retreated to the comforts of private life — that is, if Cincinnatus had worked at Goldman Sachs, Williams & Connolly or the Brookings Institution. So many of them send their kids to Georgetown Day School, the posh leftish private school in D.C., that they’ll be able to hold White House staff meetings in the carpool line.

It had only been seventeen days since Election Day. But the president-elect (complete with his own “Office of the President-Elect” logo) and his team of valedictocrats (armed with their Ivy League degrees) had already bowled Brooks over with their organizational prowess:

And yet as much as I want to resent these overeducated Achievatrons (not to mention the incursion of a French-style government dominated by highly trained Enarchs), I find myself tremendously impressed by the Obama transition…

Most of all, they are picking Washington insiders. Or to be more precise, they are picking the best of the Washington insiders. As a result, the team he has announced so far is more impressive than any other in recent memory.

…Believe me, I’m trying not to join in the vast, heaving Ophoria now sweeping the coastal haute bourgeoisie. But the personnel decisions have been superb. The events of the past two weeks should be reassuring to anybody who feared that Obama would veer to the left or would suffer self-inflicted wounds because of his inexperience. He’s off to a start that nearly justifies the hype.

And Brooks’s employer has profited mightily from the hype. Celebrating Obama’s 100-day mark, New York Times reporter Jennifer Lee exulted that the financially troubled Fishwrap of Record had sold $2 million worth of Obama-themed merchandise. The Times has a vested financial interest in propping up the Obama administration.

At ABC News, former Democrat operative-turned-objective newsman George Stephanopoulos also exhibited the symptoms of the Obama transition’s salivary gland stimulus. “We have not seen this kind of combination of star power and brain power and political muscle this early in a cabinet in our lifetimes,” Stephanopoulos dribbled. After blotting his chin a bit, he added: “[He]’s managed his transition with the same kind of precision and discipline that he managed to show during the campaign. ... It’s hard to imagine this transition going much better for the president-elect.”

The Washington Post and Newsweek both indulged in Transition-mania, launching websites featuring by-the-minute blogging of Barack Obama’s “historic” and “unprecedented” ascension to power. The New York Times told the story of how the savvy Obama made a phone call thirteen days before the election to send a feeler out to General James Jones for the national security adviser post. Thirteen whole days! As if no other incoming president over the last 232 years had come up with the genius concept of reaching out to potential nominees before inauguration day.

This used to be called planning ahead.

In the most “historic” and “unprecedented” incoming administration in our lifetimes, Obama’s phone call was hailed as a visionary advance mobilization for the benefit of Western civilization.

An inconvenient aside: For all the hype about the Greatest Transition in World History, Obama failed to beat the pace of the Reagan White House. By Day 100, Obama had 65 officials confirmed. Reagan had 73 — and the Evil Republicans did it without all the bungles and baggage that the Angels of Obama brought with them. “Obama’s a faster turtle, but he’s still a turtle,” transition analyst Paul Light observed — his voice of reason drowned out amid the media frenzy.

Journalists and cable TV talking heads chattered endlessly about Obama’s “record speed” on the one hand and his “exhaustive” vetting process on the other. Application forms ran on for 7 pages and 63 questions, the New York Times marveled. (The Bush-Cheney vice presidential application form was 200 pages. But when Republicans require rigorous background checks, it’s not “exhaustive,” it’s a paranoid invasion of privacy. But I digress.)

President-elect Obama next dispatched hundreds of meticulous “agency review team” members — “135 people divided into 10 groups, along with a list of other advisers” — into the bowels of the federal government. Their mission: To “rigorously examine programs and policies” and expedite the transfer of power. The transition team leaders wore smart yellow badges on the job with “Yes, We Can”-do attitudes to match.

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