Klain is a smart guy, and a competent political fixer, but it says something disquieting that the Obama administration has chosen a political fixer to take charge of a public health emergency. It suggests that the White House sees the Ebola problem as a political problem to be managed, not a public health problem to be solved.
As quite a few people have remarked, the most troubling thing about the Ebola crisis isn't even the Ebola, but rather the widespread incompetence it has revealed among people who are supposed to take threats to the nation seriously. And that incompetence, alas, isn't limited to Ebola.
Does God still look after fools, drunkards, and the United States of America? At this point, we'd better hope so.
Here’s the scene:
[Five scientists in hazmat suits huddle around a small glass container marked “Ebola.”]
“This is a very rare strain of the Ebola virus,” says one scientist who, oddly enough, looks extremely similar to Klain. “It produces MRNA, the deadliest of the stem loop structures.”
[The camera slowly zooms closer. Klain’s doppleganger clumsily knocks the glass container holding the virus off the table. It breaks on the floor. The other scientists gasp.]
“Oh, don’t worry,” he says, “it’s not an airborne strain.”
“Excuse me,” another scientist says, “how long have you been studying the Ebola virus?”
“Well,” he says, “I’m not actually a scientist, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.”
[Another scientist behind him passes out.]
Ron Klain is a political fixer. This response demonstrates once again that the administration is not inclined to actually do anything productive, just to make it appear that they know what they are doing.
So we start to get a pretty clear sense of where the president is going. Obama has a habit of taking audaciously inactive positions, like not bombing ISIS, only to crawfish backwards when public outrage intensifies. A travel ban of some kind is on its way, just as a war of some kind is now underway against ISIS. A president who prides himself on defying his critics has, this midterm year, turned into a public opinion appeaser. But positions obtained through backpedaling, particularly on national security, are unlikely to reassure. Having opted for another crawfish maneuver, Obama will struggle to stay ahead of the public panic that is driving his actions.
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How about we let the doctors handle the medical crisis?
ReplyDeleteMaybe if the GOP hadn't blocked the appointment of a surgeon general, we'd already HAVE a medical professional in charge of this situation!
Or this, from Ezra Klein:
"Nominating Klain suggests the White House is thinking about this correctly: as an effort that requires the coordination of already ample resources, where the danger is that the federal government will be too slow in sharing information across agencies and getting the resources where they need to go."
http://themoderatevoice.com/199648/republicans-attack-ebola-czar-blocking-surgeon-general-nomination/