The HopeChange Chronicles: Heat. Kitchen. Fill In the Blank.

The high-profile nominations of Tom Daschle and Nancy Killefer have just exploded in a fireball of unpaid taxes, and Tim Geithner is still tarred with the same brush even if he did squeak through (I'll rant on all this later!).

Add the fact that the Bill Richardson nomination blew up too, Obamessiah's attempt to talk to Iran ended with Iran behaving like -- well -- IRAN (plus shooting off rockets as well as its mouth), and the bloated stimulus bill is fast sinking like a stone. The White House pledge about not hiring lobbyists ended with Obama hiring a . . . lobbyist, and all the hoopla about this being the most transparent, ethical administration ever looks like empty rhetoric. The only substantive utterance to emerge recently was Obama in a news interview admitting "I screwed up" about the entire Daschle debacle.

The first two weeks of the most-vaunted Obama Administration look like, I'm sorry to say, amateur hour. The transition has been full of political pratfalls, and if Obama were not so personally charismatic and the media so wholeheartedly in the tank for him, more observers would pronounce that this transition team looks like it's just not ready for prime time. Look, any half-objective person looking at this entire mess should be able to say that the transition has been full of incidents. Practically the only thing that went off without a hitch was the nomination and confirmation of Hillary Clinton -- though this brings the two-headed Billary monster right back to life. All of this might be funny if it were a sit-com, if it weren't actually happening.

So amid the fallout of all this, what does the president do? He flees the White House to hang out with schoolkids. Oh, the scenario looks all cute, doesn't it? Kids asking the president who his favorite superheroes are? But something about his comment to reporters made me think of something else. He said that he was tired of being in the White House and had to get out.

Hey, isn't there an old axiom for that? Oh, yeah: "If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen."

Kitchen nightmares.

When Obama first came to power, I had said that we all as folks of good will and good sense, as Americans who put country over partisan feuding, should give him a chance. Well, I have been, and I am frankly NOT IMPRESSED. The "honeymoon," such as it was, is pretty much over. He's been in the Big Chair for only two weeks.