Fantastic! Another Obama Treasury Pick Withdraws

Democratic sources say that H. Rodgin Cohen, a partner in the New York law firm Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, and the leading candidate for Deputy Treasury Secretary, has withdrawn from consideration.

It's the third withdrawal of a top Treasury Department staff pick in less than a week.
I reported last week that Cohen was likely to be officially nominated for the Deputy Treasury Secretary position.

Cohen has been a counsel to just about every major player on Wall Street, which perhaps complicated his nomination.

Now, the nomination is off.

Treasury needs people who know what they're doing, which means that many of the same people responsible for this mess are going to be nominated (or at least in the pool of people considered for nomination). If you start restricting the pool to those who don't have contacts with Wall Street, you're going to end up with people who are completely inexperienced or unfamiliar with the players and what can or should be done to fix the issues facing Wall Street and the national and international economies.

It speaks volumes that the Administration can't find qualified people for nomination - there are hundreds of positions still to be filled and they can't even find names to consider for confirmation.

We also find out that yet another Treasury official pick was forced to withdraw from consideration because of tax troubles:

And the candidate for Undersecretary for International Affairs, Caroline Atkinson, was told she had to withdraw after a "tax problem" was revealed early in the vetting process, according to officials.

This is an Administration that can't even fill out its own coveted Administration positions because they can't find anyone who doesn't have tax troubles or isn't somehow connected to the existing mess in some fashion. That shows an ongoing lack of judgment in character and fitness of those it hopes to elevate to these positions, but it also shows that Obama himself lacks the judgment and character to lead.