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Damage Control: Obama Appoints an Ebola Czar
Things are becoming dire . . . not necessarily for those of us who fear that Ebola may spread to the US, but for Barack Obama and the Democrats. If things were not becoming really, really dire, the President would not have done what he just did — which is to appoint — drum roll, please — an “Ebola czar.”
That this is a-made-for television drama is clear from the most impressive fact about Ron Klain, the new Ebola czar. He knows nothing about medicine or epidemiology — nothing more, that is, than you or I know.
Here is the justification the President gave:
It may make sense for us to have one person … so that after this initial surge of activity, we can have a more regular process just to make sure that we’re crossing all the T’s and dotting all the I’s going forward.
The mainstream press in its wisdom tells us that Klain is a good manager. His accomplishment? He managed the allocation of stimulus funds. Take a moment to think about that.
Is Klain competent “to make sure that we’re crossing all the T’s and dotting all the I’s going forward?” When it comes to epidemiology, does he have any idea what are the I’s and what are the T’s? I have my doubts.
And do we not have a CDC and a director who has the training and the experience so that we could assume he really does know what are the I’s and what are the T’s? If the man whom Barack Obama hired in 2009 to handle this task is not up to the job (which may well be the case), should he not be replaced . . . perhaps by an epidemiologist who has not frittered away his time in recent years on the banning of soda pop in large containers?
What is going on is obvious. Ron Klain is exceptionally good at managing things . . . politically. He is good, for example, at seeing that the stimulus money ends up in the hands of clients of the Democratic Party. And my guess is that he will do a whole lot better than Tom Frieden did at managing public expectations — at “damage control.”
Klain’s new job is not to protect thee and me from an outbreak of Ebola. It is to protect the President from an outbreak of criticism. That was the task assigned Tom Frieden. But when sent out to say what is obviously untrue — that we do not need to bar from the US travelers who have spent time in the countries in West Africa where Ebola is widespread — he repeatedly made a fool out of himself. Every word of reassurance he uttered made us feel less secure.
Perhaps this ploy will work for the President. The man is a master of gestures. He has made one problem after another disappear from public view by means of a public statement or a meaningless act.
But this trick might not work this time. No one who bothers to think for two or three minutes will be reassured by a decision to entrust an epidemiological crisis to a man with no epidemiological expertise.
The Republican candidates for the Senate, if they had any moxie, would join together and in a chorus denounce this appointment as transparent window-dressing.
Published in General
Unless I am mistaken, I believe that Barack Obama thinks it immoral to protect his fellow Americans at the price of leaving the folks suffering in West Africa even more isolated than they are. We are not in the best of hands.
I was driving, listening to Rush, and he read the announcement. He also reports, IIRC, to the Dir of Homeland Security.
Yes, that is my thought as well. To be even half-way effective in keeping those with Ebola out, we would have to be vigilant. If this spreads to Latin America, our southern border may become a real problem.
Ding! Ding! Ding! But don’t worry, I’m sure the chances of that happening are well below 98.6%
Yes, indeed. Look how well they did in stopping the Enterovirus from getting into the US and spreading all over the country.
Aig, you’re not this stupid.
So we have the same standards for commenting on the internet as we do for heading up the government’s response to a crisis? Interesting argument…
Klain was up to his elbows in Solyndra, in a very interesting way:
Hmm. A political appointee who dismisses an expert’s assessment on the basis of his own whip-smart reasoning about risks? Sounds like just the guy to handle a potential lethal epidemic.
Didn’t AIG get a government bailout too? That could explain a few things. ;)
Just like the bombing of ISIS, this is President Obama looking busy.
How exactly do you see a site based on “conversation” working if we have to follow this standard and only allow experts to express an opinion? I do hope you have never posted or commented on a subject that you are not an “expert” on.
Dear Squire Obama,
Who in your cabinet, or the CDC, has noticed there are no T’s or I’s in EBOLA?
Do they really know what they are looking for, besides a paycheck?
I’d say instead of T’s or I’s they should look for passports stamped from the hot zone in the past…well, 21 days for starters.
I know it is terribly inconvenient, but the entire American population prefers not to be threatened with Ebola. You know, since we only have 4 hospitals in the country with isolation wards equipped to manage the disease.
signed,
your peasant in PA
I hope the Czar is hot and handsome. Everybody knows sex sells. Better to have picked one of the faces from a recent celebrity wedding as their Ebola spokes model?
sounds like the czars czars might be propagating faster than ebola…
get on the next plane to Liberia and hug an ebola patient, not a nurse.
I objected to the term “Czar” even when the Ronmeister (Reagan) had a drug czar and so forth. It’s an autocratic term that should be banned from use in this country . . .
The use of the word to describe a federal government appointee goes back to (surprise, surprise) the administration of Woodrow Wilson:
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czar_%28political_term%29#Development_of_term
Jennifer Lawrence would be my pick.
I think Matthew McConaughey would give good press conference:
In true czarist fashion, beyond soothing words and pomp, we can expect that his ukases will all be aimed at US citizens. Only US citizens are subject to diktat in post-constitutional America. We are second-class and will not offend first citizens of the world by not opening our borders to them – no matter what.
This just in: Wendy Davis and Kay Hagan have called for a travel ban. The Democrats are on the run!
Somebody should ask Charlie Crist.
Ok then, Guess we be needin’ two czars. :)
oh my with the way things are these days, maybe we’ll need 50 EbolaCzars to match all the various “normal” attractions. the world. what is it coming to?
Things are gettin’ hot in the hot zone in DC.
CC should lend his fan to Obama!
Now that we have an Ebola czar, does this mean we can fire the head of the Centers for Disease Control, since he apparently cannot lead a centralized disease control effort?
Suppose there were 7,000 cases of ebola in Dallas, and none elsewhere. Would we institute a travel ban to keep Dallas residents from going all around the country? Just sayin’.
Re the hope that “the Czar is hot and handsome…
Uhhh… *My* first reaction when I saw a Ron Klain photo was: “So we have Kent Dorfman protecting us all now — great…”
Incidentally, re the Administration people Klain reports to…
Apart from Susan Rice, it has been noted up the thread that Klain will also report directly to the “director for homeland security” — the role is actually (or principally) that of chief counterterrorism adviser to the POTUS (i.e., John Brennan’s old role before Obama made him DCIA). For all I know, maybe this role’s purview includes advising the POTUS on homeland security issues as well.
As I pointed out on an earlier thread initiated by Prof. Rahe, that counterterrorism adviser, Lisa Monaco, is someone I knew directly as an undergraduate classmate (starting from freshman year when we were in the same dorm). On a social-interaction level (and we never discussed politics), she seemed a decent person albeit not a dazzling intellect.
But the point is that like Klain, Monaco is an elite law school-credentialed Democratic operative — no military experience, no executive-management experience at the level of actually directly running a multi-agency program with comparably widespread life-or-death implications and fraught with scientific challenges. And I have my doubts about a prior grounding in Nuke/Bio/Chem terror briefings being sufficient for Monaco to be getting a grip on the epidemiology and related public-health issues, at least not at a level at which she and Klain could devise the measures and see their way to the means of protecting the American citizenry.
Speaking of Kent Dorfman/Ron Klain, right about now’s a good time to recall “Otter’s” consoling words to Dorfman about misplaced trust…
That criticism would be valid only if one of the “armchair-epidemiologists here” were appointed Ebola Czar…and no one here complained.
Otherwise, conflating the bona fides of the appointed head of the government’s Ebola crisis team with the bona fides of a bunch of private citizens discussing the crisis in conversations is beyond silly, it’s ludicrous.
Obama would jump at the chance.
Oh, Good Lord! We have a pandemic of bureaucracy.
LOLOLOL. ROTLFMAO.
Dr. Rahe, such a kidder. Didn’t know you had such a droll sense of humor. Funniest thing I’ve heard today.
So surprised the President didn’t go with Ben Carson for the Ebola Czar.
From the link:
“Davis joins Democratic North Carolina Senate candidate Kay Hagan, who also called for President Obama to implement a travel ban on Friday. Hagan had opposed such restrictions just two days earlier.”
I wonder if that’s because Hagan has seen her lead over Tillis go from 4.2 to 1.4 points on the RCP average since Oct. 1.