I have a message for Republicans who continue to attack Ron Klain.
Shut up.
And save it for issues that matter. Not this one that does not.
Ok, so the president's Ebola coordinator doesn't have any medical experience.
Neither do a lot of you guys. But that hasn't stopped you from pontificating if you were Marcus Welby just the same.
Thing is, I don't recall you making this kind of fuss over Stewart Simonson.
Remember him? Back in 2004, he was President Bush's bird flu czar and he didn't have any medical background either.
What he did have as an Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services, was a thorough working knowledge of government agencies and how they might work together in an emergency.
Yet Simonson was just as much the Republican political insider as Klain today is deemed a Democratic political insider.
That didn't make Simonson any less effective in dealing with the bird flu as it potentially doesn't make Klain any less effective in dealing with Ebola.
Bottom line, you don't need an MD to simply get-this.
Ebola calls for a coordinated and coherent government response now.
That doesn't mean the administration should get a pass, just pass on making Ron Klain the story.
Feel free to focus on health officials' changing stories that's fine.
Feel free to question not implementing a travel ban to and from affected and infected African nations plenty of experts on both sides. That's fine.
Feel free to report on CDC missteps over constantly changing protocols and a fair share of finger-pointing.
That's fine. That's government. That's fair. That's right.
Ripping a guy who's just trying to get a handle on a crisis? That's not fair. That's not right.
By the way, remember it was some pretty impressive doctors that screwed up this country's initial response to this Ebola mess.
Just like it was some of the brightest military minds that got us into Vietnam.
So let's just say, it's not always the guys you think, who end up fixing the crises so-called experts helped create.
By that definition, a certain country bumpkin named Abraham Lincoln hardly seemed the guy who could keep this country together through a civil war.
Or a little known haberdasher-turned-vice president Harry Truman the guy who would finish for this country a very different war.
I'm not saying Klain's a hero, but now's not the time to be calling him, or anyone, a hack.
Remember just because this virus is mutating doesn't mean simple civility and decency should be mutating with it.
Because that would be sick.
Not just because Mr. Klain and yes the president deserve better.
But because the American people do.
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