The Clock Keeps Ticking on Appointments

President Obama's personnel operation, which got off to a record-breaking start early this year in filling top administration jobs, has stalled a bit in recent months. In fact, it's well behind the pace set by the Bush administration in 2001 for the top 500 or so administration jobs -- and time is quickly running out to close the gap. At this point, the Obama administration would have to dramatically accelerate its pace in order to overtake the Bush appointee numbers by the end of this year. George W. Bush ended his first year in office having filled 81 percent of the top jobs, or about 400 posts, not counting judges, prosecutors, ambassadors and US marshals. In contrast, Obama has announced 312 picks for those jobs, and 239 nominees have been confirmed. And the window of opportunity is closing. While there's no fixed date for when a nomination could be acted upon by the Senate, it's a fairly safe bet that any nominations sent to the Hill after the end of next month would have little chance of being confirmed. The Senate will have to move at, for that body, breakneck speed to confirm that many nominees -- and it's got a lot of other things to do before the holidays.