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.By William Fisher
t r u t h o u t | Columnist
The best news to come out of Washington since the midterm elections is the rumor that Robert Gates, if confirmed by the Senate to be our new secretary of defense, will fire all Pentagon political appointees.
If President Bush has heard this rumor, he seems to be stubbornly sticking with his sterling slate of appointments.
Because the worst news to come out of Washington this week was the appointment of Eric Keroack to head family planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services. He will be heading the federal office that finances birth control, pregnancy tests, breast cancer screening, and other health care services for five million poor people annually, and advising Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt on family planning issues.
Unfortunately, Dr. Keroack's appointment does not require Senate approval - because, come January 4, when the Democratic Party majority takes over, he wouldn't stand a ghost of a chance.
So if anyone expected a kindler, gentler, more bipartisan George Bush following his election-day disaster, they're in for a shock. W's strategy is to circumvent the Congress altogether, wherever possible. Dubya's first appointment since election day rises even beyond the level of Michael Brown to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA.
And, somewhere down the road, we can expect to hear The Decider proclaim, "You're doing a heckuva job, Eric!"
Even before he moves into his new office, he could have earned such high praise from the president simply on the basis of his resume. Kerouack, you see, is, according to the New York Times, "a doctor affiliated with a group vehemently opposed to birth control and someone nationally known for his wacky theory about reproductive health."
The Times details his qualifications: medical director of an organization called A Woman's Concern, which runs pregnancy counseling clinics in Massachusetts. Its counseling consists of trying to persuade women not to have abortions, and includes the totally discredited old wives' tale that abortion increases the risk of breast cancer.
Women's Concern also has a policy against dispensing contraception, even to married women. Its web site claims that the distribution of contraceptive drugs or devices is "demeaning to women, degrading of human sexuality and adverse to human health and happiness."
Dr. Keroack has also pushed the quack-science argument that sex with multiple partners alters brain chemistry in a way that makes it harder for women to form bonding relationships.
But maybe we shouldn't be surprised.
After all, didn't The Decider decide that Ellen Sauerbrey was the most qualified candidate to head the State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, a key agency for responding to foreign disasters?
Her qualifications? She is a former member of the Republican National Committee and was Bush's Maryland state campaign chairwoman in 2000. She has been a conservative activist for decades but has no experience mobilizing responses to humanitarian emergencies. The refugee bureau is a complex agency with a broad portfolio. Past administrations, Republican and Democratic, have generally turned to people with technical expertise to head it.
Sauerbrey's appointment came just about the time Bush decided to nominate Julie Myers to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE. ICE is the Homeland Security agency responsible for tracking down money-launderers, people who break US sanctions, and traffickers in human beings. With 20,000 employees, ICE is the second-largest investigative agency in the federal government, and the sole enforcer of US immigration laws.
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