A new survey of 148 senior career federal executives and managers found that they hold President Obama’s political appointees in lower regard than those of his two predecessors.

More than 30% got a D or F in Government Executive’s survey, compared with 20% of Bush and Clinton employees, based on political appointees’ failure to listen, communicate or make agencies effective.

That suggests a degree of politicization of government itself. The political factor, of course, is Obama, who seems to have put his political fortunes above government itself, given other polls showing the same thing.

Gallup polled 238,000 active and retired military veterans between January 2010 and April 2011. The results, released Monday, show 48% of the nonmilitary public approved of the job Obama was doing, compared with just 37% of active and retired military personnel.

At the CIA, there is an “undercurrent of dissent and dislike” for the president, former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra told Human Events last week over the White House’s contradictory messages on the war on terror.

Over at the FBI, supervisors have had it with the White House, too, in this case over rules of the game that favor cronies. The Washington Post reported that FBI supervisors are angry at the president’s decision to extend the term of FBI Director Robert Mueller,which contradicts the harsh up-or-out policy for supervisors.

Then there’s the White House’s politicized priorities at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, where in 2010, agents issued a scathing letter titled “Vote of No Confidence in ICE Director John Morton and ODPP Assistant Director Phyllis Coven” for failing to allow agents to do their jobs given that the White House sees that as interfering with the Latino vote.

All of this adds up to a failure of executive leadership as short-term political objectives take precedence.

Strongmen like Hugo Chavez or Huey Long have run their fiefdoms this way, but until now, it’s never been seen here, in the Oval Office.

Unless something changes, the current White House failure to lead will mean larger blunders down the road.