The Amateur Hour Continues

Hot Air had a post this week that has resonated with me and I'm just now getting around to responding to it. The post concerned the amateur hour aspect of the Obama White House. With the resignation of Van Jones in the dark of night last night, the Hot Air post comes back to my mind and I see the Jones story as further reinforcement of Hot Air's thesis. Politico is also, albeit unwittingly, picking up on the theme with today's story on the White House casualty list.

Of course Jones isn't the first in the Obama White House to resign. He's just been the most vocal. Politico highlights four others who have turned in their keys.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air runs a weekly poll called The Obamateurism of the Week; sometimes it's hard to narrow his voting options to just four.

Nobody is prepared for The White House. I say this as a person who has never been there, but it obviously is a job that requires some on the job training. You are never quite prepared. The problem with Team Obama is that they have been so incredibly unprepared, a meme that was prevalent during the campaign, and he has made one costly and embarrasing blunder after another.

Giving the Queen an iPod pre-loaded with his own speeches comes to mind. Giving the Prime Minister plastic helicopter models of Marine One and DVDs that won't play in Britain were two embarrasing blunders.

Consider his coming address to school children this week. Nobody checked to see if kids are actually all IN SCHOOL this week. In some districts, school hasn't started yet. Nobody checked. In the total scheme of things, that's not such a big deal. He's not going to say anything that relevant anyway. But it's just a sign of the amateurism of this team.

More important examples are outlined at Ed's post, among them the inept players that have been appointed to high level positions, beginning with Tim "Turbo Tax" Geithner. I lost count of the number of appointees who didn't pay taxes. That's embarrasing and should have been caught in a proper vetting process.

Ed cites some economic and political decision examples as well, and I'd go on to suggest a serious over-exposure problem. Obama has given 111 speeches and town halls since he became president. People are beginning to tune him out. He says the same thing in all of them and most of what he says is not true. ("You can keep your health insurance!") Even Peggy Noonan has decided he's boring.

Maybe his team is figuring this last one out; he's been "on vacation" for two weeks now. After Martha's Vineyard, he needed a vacation from his vacation and went to Camp David. Of course, he'll be all over your TV this week.

But here we are, he's in office, inept as he is, and we must deal with it. All we can do is keep a watchful eye. Speak out. What the Van Jones incident shows is that the American people do still have a voice. We see that in these town halls. Even if the mainstream media doesn't cover a story, the American people are still watching and listening. The outcry over Van Jones proves that. Having a person like Jones in such a high level position is simply unacceptable. He was always a Jeremiah Wright in a Green Jobs Cloak. It's also, I think, going to lead to a more vocal outcry on the czar process. At last count there are over 30 of them.

As the Jones story plays out its final dying notes this weekend and the liberals spin it as a vicious attack, Jones will play the victim; but remember, because we spoke up there is one less radical in The White House. There are plenty of others who still need to go. The amateur hour continues.