‘Why would you want to help those people?’

July 11, 2007

We talked a bit yesterday about how former Surgeon General Richard Carmona was disgusted by the politicization of his office by the White House. He told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that he wanted to use his stature as the “nation’s doctor” to speak out on public healthy issues, but the Bush gang wouldn’t let him: “Anything that doesn’t fit into the political appointees’ ideological, theological, or political agenda is ignored, marginalized, or simply buried.”

But the closer one looks at the details, the more startling Carmona’s perspective is. This goes well beyond a story about a doctor being muzzled, and actually offers us a peek into just how warped the Bush gang really is.

Dr. Carmona said he was ordered to mention President Bush three times on every page of his speeches. He also said he was asked to make speeches to support Republican political candidates and to attend political briefings.

And administration officials even discouraged him from attending the Special Olympics because, he said, of that charitable organization’s longtime ties to a “prominent family” that he refused to name.

“I was specifically told by a senior person, ‘Why would you want to help those people?‘ ” Dr. Carmona said.

The Special Olympics is one of the nation’s premier charitable organizations to benefit disabled people, and the Kennedys have long been deeply involved in it. When asked after the hearing if that “prominent family” was the Kennedys, Dr. Carmona responded, “You said it. I didn’t.”

But wait, it gets funnier. The White House was asked to respond to Carmona’s revelations — and the Bush gang blamed Carmona.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto rejected claims of political interference, saying Carmona had all the support he needed to carry out his mission. “As surgeon general, Dr. Carmona was given the authority and had the obligation to be the leading voice for the health of all Americans,” Fratto said. “It’s disappointing to us if he failed to use his position to the fullest extent in advocating for policies he thought were in the best interests of the nation.”

Got that? Carmona tried to engage in important public health advocacy, was blocked and berated, and received orders from the White House that politicized his office to an unprecedented extent. As far the Bush gang is concerned, it’s Carmona’s fault that he failed to utilize his position.

Bill Hall, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, added, “It has always been this administration’s position that public health policy should be rooted in sound science.”

It looks like Hall made the comment over the phone — so reporters wouldn’t have to see him struggle to keep a straight face.

I do have one question, though. After years of heavy-handed politicization, why didn’t Carmona resign as soon as he realized how pathetic the White House is?

Because it’s difficult for people to realize that it is possible for someone to be so utterly bereft of any sense of shame or honor that they can rationalize anything. That, as Hamlet notes, one can “smile and smile” and still “be a villain.”

Good-intentioned people assume that these leaders *must* realize at some point that they’re wrong, and it’s important to work within the system for change.

Our system is vulnerable to abuse by rogues with no limits. Our system assumes that there are mechanisms in place to recognize when the system is being abused and to deal with it. All those mechanisms — a free press, a co-equal branch of government, an independent judiciary — have been corrupted.

But I can certainly imagine someone like Carmona going home and thinking to himself “It *can’t* be as bad as it looks…..it *must* get better soon.”

Yeah, I wish he had had the guts to say something earlier, like that soon-to-be-sleeping-with-the-fishes member of DOJ who wrote the column this week. But I can understand him.

  • Bill Hall, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, added, “It has always been this administration’s position that public health policy should be rooted in sound science.”

    That may well be true. But do they believe in any science except political science?

  • As to why Carmona didn’t resign earlier?

    He was probably like a woman in a bad marriage who kept HOPING things would get better, or her husband would drop dead, and finally resigned when he realized it just weren’t gonna happen!

  • After years of heavy-handed politicization, why didn’t Carmona resign as soon as he realized how pathetic the White House is?

    Same reason Christine Whitman kept her mouth shut for so long after seeing up close and personal how the Bushies would gladly murder Americans for money.

    Because they’re tools.

  • First, I don’t think there is anything even remotely funny about any of this; maybe I’ve gradually lost the ability to laugh with genuine humor about the doings of this administration. In general, I’m just sick of the partisan nature of everything, the cold-hearted lack of compassion for the less fortunate, and the willingness to undermine science and spend more time working to advance religious and ideological agenda than to working to improve the lives and health of Americans.

    As for why Carmona didn’t resign, maybe he had this crazy idea that he might be able to break through the partisan wall and be a force for factual information. Maybe he, like a lot of us, thought that if he could just explain the facts and the science to the flat-earthers, they would come around. I think that once you are on the inside of an organization, especially inside and at the top of the chart, you believe that it is better to stay and try to make things right, than it is to abandon the cause to someone who might be less vigilant at that, and who might, in fact, work to further undermine the agency and its mission.

  • After years of heavy-handed politicization, why didn’t Carmona resign as soon as he realized how pathetic the White House is?

    For fear of what the replacement would be like – as we now see, with this job?

  • Unreal. It’s like a glimpse into the inner machinations of the Third Reich. No one questions Dear Leader. No one disagrees with Dear Leader. Every act should be out of respect and reverence for Dear Leader and in advancement of His Cause. Awful.

  • What Anne said.

    Especially: “Maybe he, like a lot of us, thought that if he could just explain the facts and the science to the flat-earthers, they would come around.”

  • Also agreeing with Anne. I’m so damn tired of all of this, and my sense of humor’s tapped out. It just seems to go on and on, with no real consequences for anyone involved.

  • btw phoebes Carmona didn’t resign; he wasn’t reappointed.

    This whole story is the Bush administration in a nutshell. All politics; no respect for policy or results.

    so sad.

  • Agree with Ann about the unfunnyness of all this.

    Does anyone else feel like we are actually living through our own Political Holocaust? Instead of bodies, it’s the massacre of ideals, principles, objectivity, logic, civility……..I could go on……

  • Agreeing yet again with Anne:

    I’m just sick of the partisan nature of everything, the cold-hearted lack of compassion for the less fortunate, and the willingness to undermine science and spend more time working to advance religious and ideological agenda than to working to improve the lives and health of Americans.

    It is thoughts and feelings such as these amongst the populace–thoughts and feelings that I am hearing more and more from people near and around me–that happens before a Revolution.

  • Something about this story sounds familiar…

    Back in the early 1600’s, didn’t some guy tried to promote the notion that the earth moved around the sun? Yeah, but there was this Inquisition thing going on and the authorities told him that the matter had already been settled and he should STFU.

    For the next several centuries, the earth kept going around the sun anyway, until the authorities said they were sorry and that made everything all right.

  • It’s all Carmona’s fault. If he had touted abstinence, the sanctity of unborn and unformed life, the importance of a good Christian upbringing to health and worked in a few mentions of Intelligent Design as well as the wit and wisdom of Dick Cheney then he’d still have a government job – wouldn’t he?

  • Carmona had the same problem all current republicans have: they see each breach of trust as an isolated incident and are not able to connect the dots.

  • “He also said he was asked to make speeches to support Republican political candidates and to attend political briefings”

    Isn’t there a crime here (Hatch Act, IIRC?)

  • Is this doctor confessing now because he has to own up to his failings or is he doing so because he is attempting to save his own butt legally speaking? I feel suspicious of each and every one of these people whom chose not to serve Americans but their own political ambitions and those of their fellow republicans. I do not believe their spin of their story telling and who could ever know if they are telling the truth for real this time since they have lied again and again and again?The fact that doctors take an oath to serve their patients and this doctor chose not to do so tells me all I need to know about his true intentions as U.S. Surgeon General.

  • Why does this sound like the Colin Powell experience redux, albeit with less delay after leaving an administration position?

    Isn’t this a cautionary tale about what you have to do if you work for an administration that is doing things in a way that you deeply disagree with and/or know is wrong? YOU HAVE TO RESIGN!! Your reputation is a lot easier to protect if you take that step when it matters, and much less so if you tell tales once you’re on the outside, months or years later. And that applies no matter who is in charge.

  • Is everyone really so sure the BushCo reference to “those people” was referring to the Kennedys? Its not like it is unthinkable that Bushies would have such disregard for the disabled. . . (consider Babs’ statement about Katrina refugees in the Astrodome)

  • Yikes, Zeit@21, that was ugly and um, uncalled for, and um,um,um damned it could be true. (snark) Heck, knowing them, it’s both.

    I’m with Anne to a certain extent, but there comes a point really after butting your head against the wall of intractibility that is the Bush political machine, that any sentient sane being would have to throw their hands up and realize that nothing they say or do will ever change things from the inside. I just think that 4+ years is a damned long line to reach that point. And as someone noted, he didn’t actually resign, he wasn’t re-appointed.

    So only half-kudos to the good doctor for his recent testimony.

  • I think the reason they don’t resign is that by the time they want to, they’ve already cooperated with a bunch of indefensible stuff.

    Nobody goes to a party, does a bunch of illegal drugs there, then has a fit of conscience and shows up at the police station to report what’s going on.

    Human nature.

  • Here is Carmona’s answer:

    Carmona served his 4-year term as surgeon general and was not reappointed. In an interview, Carmona said he thought about quitting many times, but added, “You also realize that if you quit, who else is going to do this job?”

  • “why didn’t Carmona resign as soon as he realized how pathetic the White House is?”

    Because he didn’t “realize” anything. He was pushed out because he was incompetent. Then he got pissed off and made up a story.

    It’s the old get-back-at-the boss game.

    And you’re so gullible, you fell for it.

    It really did get funnier, didn’t it.

  • “why didn’t Carmona resign as soon as he realized how pathetic the White House is?”

    Because he didn’t “realize” anything. He was pushed out because he was incompetent. Then he got pissed off and made up a story.

    It’s the old get-back-at-the-boss game.

    And you’re so gullible, you fell for it.

    It really did get funnier, didn’t it.

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