Matt Gunterman July 12th, 2007

My efforts this morning to live blog the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions confirmation hearings for Dr. James W. Holsinger’s nomination to surgeon general got complicated by blips in technology. In the end, I had picture but no sound. All I can report from my observations is that Holsinger looked rather nervous, but who wouldn’t be appearing under the cloud left by the testimony of George W. Bush’s first surgeon general, Dr. Richard Carmona, who essentially said that he had Bush minions watching his every move and vetting his every word.

In the end, Holsinger’s fate in these hearings will come down to whether the focus of the attention is on Holsinger himself or Bush’s persistent placement of ideologues in such positions.

The problem for Holsinger is that his record has demonstrated that he has the capacity to be a strong ideologue and potentially be a great “team player” with all the other Bushies.

Holsinger stated that what he wrote in 1991 does not reflect where he is today. Fine. But the propensity to go to the lengths he did — going so far as to miscontextualize science and medicine — to achieve his ideological goals is frightening. He might have overcome his opinions, but has he overcome this trait of personality and character? I doubt it.

I’m off the rest of the afternoon to write, write, write on book projects. So, I’m leaving you with some materials from the Herald-Leader and Courier-Journal’s coverage:

For updated coverage from the Herald-Leader’s Janet Patton, click here.

Both the Courier-Journal and Herald-Leader editorial pages have chimed in with revised opinions on Holsinger’s nomination.

The consensus: George W. Bush with his far-right ideological agenda is destroying the nation’s faith in even the most benign institutions of government, and it’s a shame that Dr. James W. Holsinger is caught in the middle of that, but that’s life.

From the Courier-Journal:

Double standards

Imagine somebody had testified under oath that Bill Clinton routinely muzzled the surgeon general — regularly blocked him from taking public positions more conservative than those of the administration.

Imagine that a surgeon general swore, on pain of perjury, that the Clinton bunch didn’t just try to suppress one report it didn’t like but regularly (1) told him to attend “political pep rallies,” (2) edited his speeches to remove ideas Bill and Hillary wouldn’t like, and (3) tried to turn major health reports into political documents, then squelched them when they couldn’t.

[...]

Imagine, in sum, discovering that the administration had turned the surgeon general’s office into a public relations outlet and the surgeon general himself into a political and ideological shill.

Well, that’s the story that finally came out, in former Surgeon General Richard Carmona’s testimony to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee this week. But Dr. Carmona was talking about George W. Bush, the man who appointed him, and not about Bill Clinton.

It’s the Bushies who tried to strong-arm him into being a spokesman for their policies on stem cell research, emergency contraception, sex education, prison health care and global warming.

[...]

From the Herald-Leader:

Surgeon general
Holsinger must show he won’t be puppet

You have to wonder if Dr. James Holsinger felt a certain chill as he listened, as we presume he did, to testimony of former U.S. surgeon generals this week.

Holsinger, who often displayed an admirable, if sometimes excessive, sense of his own rightness and independence as a public health official in Kentucky, today appears before a Senate panel as President Bush’s nominee for surgeon general.

On Tuesday, Dr. Richard Carmona, who left the post last year, testified that the Bush administration was partisan, malicious, vindicative and hostile in its heavy-handed meddling in the work of the office.

[...]

Can Holsinger hold off the political operatives who Carmona said wanted to insert three positive references to the administration on every pageof speeches delivered by the surgeon general?

Would he be willing to turn aside administration instructions to stiff the Special Olympics because it is associated with a family of prominent Democrats?

Holsinger must convince the Senate committee, and himself, that he can really be the nation’s doctor and not just the president’s puppet.

• James W. Holsinger , Surgeon General
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