26 Comments

It’s difficult to watch Karine Jean-Pierre’s press conferences and not reach the same conclusion. She may have many gifts, but holding WH press conferences ain’t one of them. Imagine if Biden tried to remove her!

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Aug 12, 2022·edited Aug 12, 2022

Why couldn’t Biden have tapped a well-qualified, Hispanic public health expert, daring the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to oppose him or her? If they did, it would only reveal their own hypocrisy.

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Excellent point that diversity and talent are absolutely manageable conditions. This is why med school affirmative action for minorities AND rural whites (worth emphasizing the last point for the skeptics) do not concern me at all. We have a huge number of qualified candidates for every spot, and working in medicine has confirmed that we are hiring qualified people (bad doctors exist, but due to factors like arrogance or burnout that are hard to screen for in an admissions process).

Now if we limited med school admission to members of congress (of any ethnicity) we'd have a huge problem obviously. Ron Johnson is definitely too stupid to be a doctor. Chuck Schumer could never tell a patient they had cancer and would never refuse someone opioids no matter how bad the situation, because it's just not in him. And Dr. Rand Paul is too insane to be any good at his job.

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I would be so embarrassed to be a minority and for people in 'my group' to insist on hiring/promoting from 'my group' regardless of whether qualified.

The dynamic is endemic to the Democrats, who leverage criticism of this type of identity politics to smear opponents as white supremacists, sexists, homophobes, etc.

At the end of the day, stereotypes end up being reinforced, minorities feel tokenized, and people lose their faith. Even if Becerra were qualified, I don't see how considering only specific minority groups for any position ends up with anyone feeling positive.

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I never understood what Biden was thinking in making this appointment right in the middle of the Covid pandemic. On the one hand, I was glad to see Becerra out of California politics, but I also knew that he's nothing more than a party hack who was remarkably unfit for this particular job at this particular time.

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I'm afraid this is "swimming upstream".

All that really matters is getting re-elected.

If it happens to be good for the country that is a happy coincidence.

Neither party has this sad approach cornered.

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Agree with this piece. It is worth flagging one thing that HHS did get right, the unprecedented decision to not cover Aduhelm. This is saving us a fortune over a bizarre and almost disastrous decision by the FDA. At the time, there were indications in the biopharma press that Becerra was a uniquely good figure to deal with this type of situation. Who knows if that part is true.

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Unqualified people being put in cabinet positions isn’t new. It’s just higher profile this time around.

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I agree with everything you say and it’s obvious Biden isn’t going to fire him. But, it may be naive to think Becerra will leave of his own volition. Why would he? Especially if his tenure at HHS hurts his Senate chances....oh, and by the way, I live in CA and never hear anyone talking about him for Senate.

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