The White House seems to be growing rather annoyed by its own response to the Covid-19 pandemic since President Biden took office. Despite lofty promises of expanding testing and promises to “shut down the virus,” the infection rate rages on and the general public is sick and tired of listening to the health bureaucracy inside the federal government.
What this all means, naturally, is that somehow Biden has to pivot on this issue, and many issues, actually, by a staff shakeup inside the cabinet and perhaps some other government agencies.
Part of the problem here with Xavier Becerra, Secretary of Health and Human Services, is that he’s not a doctor and has no medical background. He was, however, tasked with heading the federal government’s largest agency dedicated to public health as a means to promote a pro-abortion agenda.
As a result, the Biden administration’s Covid response has suffered due to the president’s own incompetence and bumbling of this crucially important cabinet pick in the middle of a global pandemic:
White House officials have grown so frustrated with top health official Xavier Becerra as the pandemic rages on that they have openly mused about who might be better in the job, although political considerations have stopped them from taking steps to replace him, officials involved in the discussions said.
Top White House officials have had an uneasy relationship with Becerra, the health and human services secretary, since early in President Biden’s term. But their dissatisfaction has escalated in recent months as the omicron variant has sickened millions of Americans in a fifth pandemic wave amid confusing and sometimes conflicting messages from top health officials that brought scrutiny to Biden’s strategy, according to three senior administration officials and two outside advisers with direct knowledge of the conversations.
That’s fine and good that Biden advisors are now looking for a skull to take as a means to satisfy the media and critics of a shoddy and pathetic Covid action plan.
The problem here is that Biden is the one who put this inexperienced lawyer in charge of a public health agency in the first place:
Becerra, a former California attorney general and longtime congressman with little health-care experience, was never given a clear role in a response that is run out of the White House, prompting defenders to say it is unfair to blame him for recent stumbles. Still, his low profile has become more confounding as the pandemic has worn on and health officials have made statements that sometimes blindsided the president and bewildered the public, some officials and outside experts say.
If you would’ve asked me what kind of background the Secretary of Health and Human Services has, I would’ve guessed a doctor or at least some degree of medical background.
The prior three people to fill that role had at least something related to healthcare on their resume. Alex Azar previously worked in the pharmaceutical industry, Tom Price was an actual physician, and even Sylvia Burwell, Obama’s final appointee, served on the board of the University of Washington Medical Center and worked in the medical insurance field.
So far, the only thing related to healthcare or the medical field that Xavier Becerra has on his resume was suing the Center for Medical Progress to prevent the release of undercover videos demonstrating the way Planned Parenthood harvests and sells baby body parts.
Otherwise, the last time Becerra had anything to do with healthcare was probably when he had his last annual physical.
For a purely political reason, Becerra was handed the keys to HHS during a public health crisis and the results are, perhaps, what you would expect:
“He hasn’t shown up,” said Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute and a prominent covid analyst, adding that Becerra has been “like a ghost” during the pandemic. “An HHS secretary has so much authority and power to help. And we have no evidence that any of it is being exerted.”
He hasn’t shown up because he has no freaking clue what he’s doing and has no business being the head of a public health agency. It’s taken twelve months for the Biden people to figure this out, yet they’re afraid to fire him because it would look bad and fuel critics pointing out the truth that this administration is a cobbled collection of woke progressive activists with little experience in the areas they’re in charge of. Pete Buttigieg was a mayor with a terrible record, and once he rode a bus, so make him transportation secretary during a supply chain crisis.
In total, Becerra is nothing more than a fall guy for Biden’s failures in managing the pandemic and putting competent people in charge.
Biden seems unfazed by the whirlwind of a dumpster fire swirling around him:
Biden is also averse to firing staffers and unlikely to make major changes unless there are glaring reasons to do so, one senior official said. As a result, the informal conversations about replacing Becerra are unlikely to escalate to serious deliberations in the near future.
Multiply this problem a few dozen more times around the executive branch and you can begin to understand why Biden’s presidency is hosed. He’s a failure as a boss. He’s unable to lead or actually demand accountability. The people he selected for his cabinet were done for political reasons, not because they were the best for the job.
If Becerra is fired or demoted, it’ll be because Joe Biden should’ve been fired or demoted first.
