Politico: “As Obama now takes his final lap in the White House, a POLITICO analysis of Cabinet-level agencies found that dozens of crucial jobs in his administration are either totally empty or run by an acting deputy. As senior aides have bolted for higher paying gigs, their jobs have remained empty — in some cases with replacements stuck in Senate limbo who may never get confirmed. More than a quarter of the administration’s most senior jobs, more than 100 overall, are missing permanent occupants. It’s not unusual for a president to have numerous open slots in the last year of his second term, as longtime officials leave for their next jobs, and it becomes harder to recruit qualified leaders for short-term work. Even so, the Obama vacancies are seen by experts as outside the norm, thanks in large part to a gridlocked congressional confirmation process that was blocking jobs from being filled even before the lame-duck phase began…”