In yet more evidence that the movie Idiocracy was in fact a prophetic documentary, President Obama has yielded to public pressure to do something about Ebola by doing something stupid, he has appointed yet another Czar. Despite the fact that “Ebola Czar” has kind of a poetic ring to it, one has to question what this appointment will accomplish besides adding another bloated salary to the deficit.
The use of “czars” to consolidate administrative power without the need for Senate confirmation is a tactic that dates back to, yeah, you guessed it, FDR. Of the 110 “czars” that have been appointed since then, President Obama has been responsible for about a third of them. The appointment of a new Czar has largely replaced “forming an investigatory committee” and “calling a high level staff meeting” as a highly visible, though unproductive, way of looking as though you’re actually doing something about a problem. So the two nurses, the rest of the quarantined medical staff, the city of Dallas, all the folks on that cruise ship, the passengers on the Frontier jet… and the rest of us concerned citizens… we can all rest assured; there’s a new Czar in town. Go back to watching your “Dancing With the Stars”; there’s nothing to see here. Your geniuses in Washington have everything under control… Look! We have a czar!
So I would suppose there was a list of candidates for this position; after all, you don’t just take the first czar that comes along for something as deadly as Ebola! I would think we would be looking for someone with a long list of medical credentials, someone who would be able to oversee development of “protocols” where people working with the disease could actually avoid contracting it? You know, maybe some protocols that relied less heavily on duct tape? Yes, certainly a doctor or a scientist who actually knew about what we are dealing with, how to effectively deal with it, and how the variable of human beings figures into our response.
Having gone through this list of highly qualified candidates, somehow, someone (and I’m not pointing fingers) came up with a name that couldn’t possibly have been on the list, Ron Klain. Is Ron Klain a doctor… a scientist… a hospital administrator? No. He is a lawyer. Well, that is his academic training. He’s actually a Democratic political operative. He’s a fixer. By fixer I don’t mean someone who actually fixes real world problems, I mean someone who fixes political problems. If you saw Wag the Dog, Klain would be analogous to the Robert De Niro character. He was actually portrayed by Kevin Spacey for the HBO propaganda piece, Recount.. remember the hanging chads? His selection speaks volumes about what kind of problem the administration envisions this Ebola concern to be.
If you have a problem with your roof, you call a roofer, or a general contractor, or maybe your handy brother in law. If your car is acting up, you get a mechanic. If you’re sick you go to the doctor. If you have a possible pandemic looming on the horizon, you get yourself a pandemic expert. But this administration does not see this as a pandemic problem, after all, three infections do not constitute a pandemic. They see it in the here and now as a political problem, and it indeed is for them, and so… who you gonna call? … a doctor? … no, a spin doctor. For many in this game politics becomes the prism the rest of reality is viewed through. For us, when we hear of a pandemic we are concerned for the public health, our own health, the health of our children. Their first thoughts are about the politics of Ebola. Hence, paramount to their agenda of “controlling the mob”, and maintaining their political capital, is avoiding the appearance that the world is falling apart under their mantle of leadership. Stopping Ebola is tomorrow’s problem, today’s problem is a political one, and like Benghazi just before the last election, it couldn’t come at a worse time; and like Benghazi, for these folks politics again come first.
IMHO: One advantage of growing older is that people no longer just assume you’re stupid, you generally have to prove it to them. A notable exception to that rule is progressive politicians. Part and parcel of their world view is the idea that the population is constantly in need of overseers for a general welfare that cannot exist without a strong governmental presence. For them the nation is populated by ignorant lambs, a few cunning wolves, and the shepherding elite whose charge it is run the show. And make no mistake it is very much presented as a show for our entertainment and diversion, with President Obama joining Emerson, Lake and Palmer for a rousing rendition of Karn Evil 9, “…With our hands behind our backs, we pull Jesus from a hat… come on see the show!” With every crisis the explanations proffered for public consumption become more absurd. We’ve all been lied to plenty in our lives, it is I suppose as inevitable as getting rained on. It’s not being lied to that is the most insulting though, it is the apparent assumption that we are so stupid that it isn’t even necessary to come up with a good lie, and that we can’t handle the truth. There will always be a few people that think all muslims are terrorists, and perhaps a greatly overlapping group who believe that Ebola will descend on America like the Plague. Yeah, those people are not comforted by Presidential addresses, they’re not watching you sir. For the rest of us, the overly dismissive tenor of the messaging is an affront. Don’t tell us how difficult it is to transmit the disease when it constitutes an epidemic in West Africa, and two trained professionals here managed to “beat the odds” and contract it… it’s contagious enough to be a concern. Don’t tell us how you’re now quarantining the health professionals who worked with the index patient, but that there’s no point in instituting a travel ban to at least make an attempt to quarantine a country full of the virus. Don’t expect us to believe that this is easily manageable by contact observation and surveys of symptoms. As Dr. House sagely observed, “Everybody lies!” … they also get on jet liners, subways, and cruise ships. Don’t pretend that you have things under control, when you clearly do not, and are substituting placebos for the tough medicine required to avert a crisis. Spare us the shifting of blame… where is the buck supposed to stop? You wanted this job, now do it! We don’t need a czar to mitigate the political damages, we need a President to guard our borders from enemies foreign and domestic, and that includes Ebola. Politics and political spin can’t be our first response to a potential pandemic. Put aside the absurd accusations, the policy decisions based on polling data, the prognostications of how a reasonable action will affect the next election. Please understand that for the most part, we are not fools and we can handle the truth. Save your political theater for less perilous times and get busy with real solutions for this very real threat… this ain’t Hollywood.
