What is wrong with the Obama communications team? After months of top-notch messaging, this week has been an unmitigated disaster – and it’s only Wednesday.

First was Obama’s ill-conceived and poorly executed announcement Monday that he was ordering his Cabinet to cut $100 million from the Federal government’s $3.6 trillion budget.

Then came the bizarre statements from the Administration on torture yesterday, with the President unexpectedly flip-flopping on potential prosecutions of former government officials at the same time that the Director of National Intelligence penned a memo arguing that the practices produced “high-value information.” (POLITICO just posted a must-read story on the muddled torture message.)

These two message-missteps came as news broke last night that White House Communications Director Ellen Moran was resigning to take what POLITICO described as a “decidedly less powerful position” at the Commerce Department. The New York Times quoted unnamed Democrats saying that she resigned because “she had not been a good fit inside the White House,” which sounds like a nice way of saying that she didn’t fit well with David Axelrod. (In fact, Chris Cillizza’s post on Axelrod’s inner circle earlier this week originally included Moran’s deputy, but not Moran herself.)

With the 100-day anniversary just one week away, it’s notable that almost all of Obama’s accomplishments so far have been rhetorical, rather than policy-based. (That is to say, he is getting credit for making big announcements on everything from Gitmo to health care, even if the actual policies are still in development.) So if the message-machine starts to sputter – as it has this week – then the White House’s second 100 days could be a lot more challenging than the first.

Tags: Axelrod, cillizza, communications, new york times, obama, politico, roll-out, White House