[2006alum]

That is a rather unusual interpretation of the article, to put it mildly. The gist damns Azar in about every way possible. At that January 18tb briefing, he also reassured the Administration that he had all the resources necessary for containment. The tune changed at the end of January , when just about everything changed. Some sort of tipping point occurred on the 28th.

Yes, the article damns Azar, which I noted when I first posted it.  And who does Azar report to?  Remember "Only the best people"?  It's the job of a leader to hire people on the basis of competence rather than loyalty (this seems to be a recurring problem with this president) and it's the job of a leader to cut through the bullshit when an underling is buttering you up.  So yeah, Azar's failures reflect on Trump.

BC

Absolutely it does. There is no question that the current administration has had significantly more turnover than previous administrations. That said, I don't believe it is clear that Azar is worse than lots of other political appointees of other presidents. He wasn't up to the job in the current case, but in that way he is not unique. If one looks at the qualifications of many (actually almost all) of the appointees at both the State and Federal level to these types of jobs, you blood will run cold. For example, given our problems with PG&E look at the California PUC website and the CV of the members. They are all political hacks that have spent their careers in government. Not one of them has ever run a business, worked for a utility (or a railroad or a cab company...), or studied anything directly thereto related. Perhaps that isn't a good idea?

If you think the qualifications of the appointees of this administration are even near the past three, I have a wet market in Wuhan to sell you. Nearly a quarter of key political appointments have gone unfilled, and there have been so many acting secretaries, deputies, etc., that there is literally a burgeoning academic literature on the legal ramifications of having much of the government run by "actings" who have only temporary decisionmaking authority.

And then there are headlines like this:
[tweet]https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1253075681908531200?s=20[/tweet] 

The notion that staffing and appointment quality in this Administration has been equivalent to every other administration is not an empirically credible claim. My professional network includes many staffers of the past three administrations (Bush II, Obama, and Trump), and even my friends who work for the Trump administration would admit they are not as qualified as their predecessors, but because most of the best people were either blocked due to political affiliations or else refused to have anything to do with this Administration, for precisely that reason had access to opportunities well above their qualifications grade.

[2006alum]

That is a rather unusual interpretation of the article, to put it mildly. The gist damns Azar in about every way possible. At that January 18tb briefing, he also reassured the Administration that he had all the resources necessary for containment. The tune changed at the end of January , when just about everything changed. Some sort of tipping point occurred on the 28th.

Yes, the article damns Azar, which I noted when I first posted it.  And who does Azar report to?  Remember "Only the best people"?  It's the job of a leader to hire people on the basis of competence rather than loyalty (this seems to be a recurring problem with this president) and it's the job of a leader to cut through the bullshit when an underling is buttering you up.  So yeah, Azar's failures reflect on Trump.

BC

Absolutely it does. There is no question that the current administration has had significantly more turnover than previous administrations. That said, I don't believe it is clear that Azar is worse than lots of other political appointees of other presidents. He wasn't up to the job in the current case, but in that way he is not unique. If one looks at the qualifications of many (actually almost all) of the appointees at both the State and Federal level to these types of jobs, you blood will run cold. For example, given our problems with PG&E look at the California PUC website and the CV of the members. They are all political hacks that have spent their careers in government. Not one of them has ever run a business, worked for a utility (or a railroad or a cab company...), or studied anything directly thereto related. Perhaps that isn't a good idea?

If you think the qualifications of the appointees of this administration are even near the past three, I have a wet market in Wuhan to sell you. Nearly a quarter of key political appointments have gone unfilled, and there have been so many acting secretaries, deputies, etc., that there is literally a burgeoning academic literature on the legal ramifications of having much of the government run by "actings" who have only temporary decisionmaking authority.

And then there are headlines like this:
[tweet]https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1253075681908531200?s=20[/tweet] 

The notion that staffing and appointment quality in this Administration has been equivalent to every other administration is not an empirically credible claim. My professional network includes many staffers of the past three administrations (Bush II, Obama, and Trump), and even my friends who work for the Trump administration would admit they are not as qualified as their predecessors, but because most of the best people were either blocked due to political affiliations or else refused to have anything to do with this Administration, for precisely that reason had access to opportunities well above their qualifications grade.