I promise there’s a valid and unimpeachable point here, nothing to do with autism. A new Executive Order changed something regarding childhood vaccines, and the recently benched Senator from Louisiana isn’t a fan:
As Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican and physician, wrote on social media on Monday, ‘This executive order is wrong. The President does not have the expertise to make these changes.’
This declaration is both true and irrelevant.
Sen. Cassidy may be one of the few members of Congress who is an expert on childhood vaccines. And 99 percent of what has ever been decided, by every President ever, is outside any colorable expertise. Maybe Eisenhower, since defense is roughly half the federal budget, wrecks the curve. But good, bad, indifferent, expertise isn’t what put them in the chair.
It’s not what people vote on. College transcripts may be a subject of fascination, but nobody voted for JFK over Nixon because he graduated cum laude from a fancy school.
They look to proxies for effectiveness. For example, people believe, I think rightly, military service indicates a degree of leadership and character. But not mastery of the thousands of topics on which the government plays a meaningful role.
It’s true of the political appointees reporting to POTUS too. The breadth of modern agencies and their various components means even an honest-to-god MIT nuclear physicist doesn’t have the wherewithal to know everything done at the Department of Energy. No one does—you’d be surprised how that applies to even highly specialized functions.
Unless it’s the Clark R. Bavin National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory and you’re the forensic scientist, crime scene investigator, and NYT bestselling crime thriller author who runs it.
No, from the President on down, expertise is distributed throughout thousands and thousands of feds, many of them career employees, and those in positions of authority need to be good at receiving and synthesizing that knowledge.
I know from experience.
Look, I ain’t just whistlin’ Dixie when I say I’m one of the most expert federal regulatory nerds in the country, and even I don’t know a stitch about hemp cultivation (my first day on the job). You gotta rely on specialists all around you—maybe you’re the one that hires them. A good leader encourages frank and expert advice to make it through to them, and then they decide how to weigh various views and considerations. If anything, that’s supposed to be their skill.
Voters are allowed to choose whatever criteria they want, but there’s never been an “expert in everything” on the ballot. A candidate may have credibility as a successful businessman, and that’s important to some people. Perfectly reasonable, but no one thinks they must also be a scholar of antiterrorism or master of affordable housing. The implication is that they are decisive, knows how to hire good people, hears out multiple opinions, etc. and that’ll be what works in the job.
And it can be done, gathering all that technical expertise by a non-expert.
Former colleague Paul Ray wrote a whole paper about it with a super esoteric title (he’s the kind of person who can, like, quote Plotinus on the fly in an affordable housing discussion).
Of course voters don’t get a direct say on cabinet officials, and subcabinet secretaries, and sub-bureau deputy whatevers….literally every Executive Branch official except POTUS. Some 4,000 politicals on a good day. The ones supposed to give the President advice, themselves receivers of distributed knowledge.
[HIGH SARDONIC WARNING]
It’s all very undemocratic…if only there was a way for, say, an elected official to voice their opinion and judge expertise for these positions. For instance, if someone interested in a federal job overseeing major entitlements, drug regulation, communicable diseases, toxic chemical hazards, patient data, medical innovation, and medical countermeasure stockpiles had to meet with, testify, and be voted on by elected officials, that would mitigate some of the undemocratic-ness I would think. At least then, hopefully, some of those elected officials could specialize in a subset of issues, maybe form a kind of committee to do so, and confer directly to determine suitability.
Suitability according to their own determination. Because again, very few people are truly experts beyond one or two things and there’s no universal rubric to apply.
[AND SCENE]
So no. No childhood inoculation regimen expert is he, the President.
Sen. Cassidy happens to be though. And in his expert judgment, considering all the things he thought salient and important, he voiced his judgment about those who would be in a position to advise the President. In the case of a HHS Secretary, one making no secret about a long-time advocacy for the policy on which Cassidy is now upset, he concluded “aye.”
I have no strong opinion one way or the other on the topic; that’s not what this is about. I’m not an expert. But Sen. Cassidy’s protest about lacking expertise is curious. Because it’s both true and totally besides the point.
The most effective time for him to worry about expertise, and to apply his own, was some point last year. Really the frustration, understandable, is that he lacked sufficient expertise to see this coming.
[Still he’s not the least self-aware member of the YOLO Caucus]