It may look like a long way down the power-packing food chain from Director of National Intelligence to Surgeon General, but Obama's Surgeon General pick, Sanjay Gupta, reveals the same fundamental problem as Admiral Blair: he's part of the problem, not part of the solution, and promoting him in the name "competence" merely serves to expose the rhetoric of "competence" for the hollow shell it is, when, after 8 years of utter incompetence, it ought to be something real, concrete and capable of unifying Americans across the boards.
Like Blair, Gupta utterly fails that test, despite a considerable skill set. Technical skills without integrity and without a commitment to the public good are not enough to qualify as competence for high-level public office, no matter how impressive those technical skills may be. And, in fact, a closer look at the skill set reveals some real deficiencies there as well. Paul Krugman raised the red flag on Gupta earlier this week, and now John Conyers has issued a " Dear Colleague" letter seeking support in opposition to Gupta's appointment.
On his blog, "Conscience of a Liberal," Paul Krugman kicked things off when he wrote Jan 6 ("The trouble with Sanjay Gupta"):
So apparently Obama plans to appoint CNN's Sanjay Gupta as Surgeon General. I don't have a problem with Gupta's qualifications. But I do remember his mugging of Michael Moore over Sicko. You don't have to like Moore or his film; but Gupta specifically claimed that Moore "fudged his facts", when the truth was that on every one of the allegedly fudged facts, Moore was actually right and CNN was wrong.
What bothered me about the incident was that it was what Digby would call Village behavior: Moore is an outsider, he's uncouth, so he gets smeared as unreliable even though he actually got it right. It's sort of a minor-league version of the way people who pointed out in real time that Bush was misleading us into war are to this day considered less "serious" than people who waited until it was fashionable to reach that conclusion. And appointing Gupta now, although it's a small thing, is just another example of the lack of accountability that always seems to be the rule when you get things wrong in a socially acceptable way.
Some of Krugman's commentators didn't quite get it, so he had to post an update to explain:
Many commenters don't seem to get the point. Gupta didn't say "Michael Moore is an annoying blowhard"; he didn't say "We question his interpretation of the evidence"; he said he "fudged the facts". In other words, he accused Moore of lying. That's a very strong accusation, which had better be backed by solid evidence. Instead, we had CNN misreading a number from Moore; CNN objecting to Moore using a projected health care spending number for 2007 instead of an actual number for 2005 (and the projection was right, by the way); CNN accusing Moore of not showing a number that was in fact right there in the movie. And Gupta did not apologize, except for the misread number.
After 8 years of Bush/Cheney, do we really need to have it explained that integrity is job one? Apparently, we still do.
America's most famous television surgeon, Sanjay Gupta, is poised to take his black bag and microphone to the White House as President-elect Barack Obama's choice for U.S. surgeon general.
A neurosurgeon who is also a correspondent for CNN and CBS, Gupta was chosen as much for his broadcasting skills as for his medical résumé, suggesting that the incoming administration values visible advisers who can drive a public message. He has also been offered a top post in the new White House Office of Health Reform, twin duties that could make him the most influential surgeon general in history.
They next go on to note he is "one of People magazine's 'Sexiest Men Alive.'" A good thing, no doubt, as it would be rather embarrassing to have a Surgeon General who, while incredibly sexy, just happened to be dead.
Farther down into the story, however, a bit of a problem began to show its head:
The globetrotting doctor has told Obama aides he wants the job, which involves overseeing the 6,000-member Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service. When reached yesterday, Gupta did not deny that he plans to accept the offer but declined to comment.
Transition officials refused to speak on the record about his selection, but several Obama allies praised Gupta as the sort of highly visible, articulate physician who might restore the luster that the position of "the nation's doctor" had in the person of Reagan appointee C. Everett Koop and some of his predecessors.
A representative of the Commissioned Corps, however, said Gupta will face a "credibility gap" because he has never served in the uniformed Public Health Service.
"I am unaware of any public health experience or qualifications he has to be the leader of the nation's public health service," said Gerard M. Farrell, executive director of the service's Commissioned Officers Association. "This would be akin to appointing the Army chief of staff from the city council of Hoboken," N.J.
The issues are rather muddled here (what does on expect? WaPo article, Howard Kurtz is one of the co-authors...) but not too hard to straighten out:
(1) Public health and private health are two different things. Public health has much more to do with basic levels of national health-lifespan, infant mortality rate, etc.-even though private health gobbles up the vast majority of the resources and attention. One of the chief problems America has is a persistent failure to properly prioritize public health. Further accentuating this mis-prioritization at the very time that we are preparing a potentially massive restructuring of our national health care system is not a good sign.
(2) C. Everett Koop was not one of People magazine's "Sexiest Men Alive." He was an unexpectedly (for Versailles) principled man who had been expected to robotically carry out a rightwing agenda, and did not. He was noteworthy precisely because he was steeped in the public health ethos and took his position very seriously, over-riding all other considerations. He was just the sort of moral heavyweight that's the exact opposite of the glib, mediagenic Gupta.
Koop was also one of a handful of doctors who virtually invented the field of pediatric surgery from the ground up. It would not be an exaggeration to call him a towering figure in medical history. See Wikipedita for more. The idea that Gupta could be compared to Koop is something that only a media person, not a medical person, could contemplate for a second without spraying coffee all over their keyboard.
(3) Farrell is not just being an envious grouch. He is exactly the sort of neglected government scientist/staff professional that the Bush Administration spent 8 years running over, around and through. Obama's willingness to take the same cavalier attitude toward the concerns Farrell raises that Bush/Cheney did is deeply disturbing, to say the least.
Conyers cited both Krugman and Farrell:
Dear Colleague,
Please join me in signing a letter to President-Elect Barack Obama opposing the nomination of Dr. Sanjay Gupta for the post of Surgeon General.
I join in opposition with respected Nobel Prize award wining economist Paul Krugman, who has very serious concerns with having Dr. Gupta be the nation's Surgeon General. (See January 6, 2009, New York Times Hosted Blog, "Conscience of a Liberal."
Also, there are highly experienced medical professionals who question whether Dr. Gupta has the necessary experience or even the medical background to be in charge of the 6,000 physicians who work in the United States Public Health Service. Gerard M. Farrel, Executive Director of the Commissioned Officers Association, stated in a January 7, 2008 Washington Post article that Dr. Gupta will certainly face a "credibility gap" because he never served in the National Health Service Corp, and furthermore, does not have the "experience or qualifications to be the leader of the nation's public health service." Clearly, it is not in the best interests of the nation to have someone like this who lacks the requisite experience needed to oversee the federal agency that provides crucial health care assistance to some of the poorest and most underserved communities in America.
To sign on to the letter, please contact my office at 202 225-5126.
Sincerely,
John Conyers, Jr.
Member of Congress
We can expect Versailles to pooh-pooh Conyers and his concerns. After all, they don't ever think about public health, unless--God forbid!--they should get food poisoning at some swanky restaurant. But out here in America, things might just look a little bit different, if folks stop to think about it.
