John McCain Calls For President Obama To Appoint 'Ebola Czar'

John McCain Calls For President Obama To Appoint 'Ebola Czar'

Yeah. How about that "Heckuva Job" Brownie guy?

Seriously ...

McCain wants someone to be in charge, presumably someone who has no other job. Right now, lacking said Czar, it's not clear whether the CDC or the Surgeon General should be in charge of this, but they both report to Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, so she's the one who is ultimately accountable, and she definitely needs to be getting a handle on this.

Of course, Secretary Burwell has about a bazillion other things to worry about, and her experience is as a generic manager, and she has no training in health matters. In fact, she has no graduate degree of any kind, but does hold two bachelor's degrees, one in government from Harvard, the other in philosophy from Oxford.

So she is properly trained to accept governmental failure philosophically.

Obviously she needs to delegate to somebody in the health field. At the moment her choices are limited because there is no Surgeon General, so the CDC has to take the lead. Is that agency, and the Obama administration in general, doing a good job on the Ebola threat?

Beats me. The CDC director says he's got it covered, but the responses below his comments indicate that many citizens feel skeptical. (I give the CDC props for allowing people to express harsh criticism publicly, without censorship, thus fostering a lively debate.)