It's so hard to find good help these days

The Obama Administration's woes in filling political appointees are getting a lot of attention in the media. However, it should be noted that Obama is doing better than average when compared to previous presidents.

Much of the problem is that Obama's ethical standards are so stringent that qualified candidates with relevant experience are forced to screen themselves out of consideration. For example, Obama's ban on lobbyists sounded great in theory, but often people with the right skills do have lobbyist gigs on the side. There's a good story at NPR on this, too.

Plus, there's a decent amount of scalp-hunting at work here that ultimately goes against our national interest - as Megan McArdle puts it,

This new tradition of bulldogging every appointee in the hope of embarrassing the president has to stop. We should be focusing on whether or not the nominee can do the job, not whether there is some small breach of an onerous regulation in his history that can possibly be dug up. It feels good in the short term, but when ability to find a native-born nanny becomes a more important qualification for the presidential candidate than experience relevant to the job to be done, it's time for a national rethink.