Sylvia Burwell, Sibelius and the Spanish Armada


President Obama said Friday that he was nominating his budget director, Sylvia Mathews Burwell, to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.  This is an attempt to take up some slack from the frayed ends of Kathleen Sebelius’s disastrous rollout of the flag ship of Obama’s armada, Obamacare.  Never mind that Obama’s armada is meeting the same fate as Spain’s in 1588 after the Battle of Gravelines. 

[Actually the popular, “Armada portrait” of Elizabeth I graces the cover of my book about her, Glorianna!  And her speech prior to the battle is one of the best given by any world leader:  “Let tyrants fear, I have always so behaved myself, that under God I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and goodwill of my subjects…I am come amongst you as you see at this time.. in the midst and heat of battle, to live or die amongst you all – to lay down for my God, and for my kingdoms, and for my people, my honour and my blood even in the dust. I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king – and of a King of England too…”]

However, while the devastation of the Spanish Armada was a high point of Elizabeth’s reign, we are not yet sure how the battle of Obamacare is going to turn out.  I do know that Ms. Sebelius is no Sir Frances Drake and Elizabeth I would turn Obama into a rump lord in some far flung and nasty cold province.  She did not suffer fools lightly.   Whether Ms. Burwell can save the fleet is yet to be seen.  She does have the one thing that all Obama appointees need: unquestioning loyalty and zeal for King Phillip of Spain—oh, wait, I mean President Obama.  She takes on the role of Medina Sidonia (Knight of the Golden Fleece, and I think that may be significant).  Sidonia (Burwell???) lacked needed experience and wisdom, but the micro-managing king probably wanted a commander who would obey his instructions to the letter.  Sidonia, like all good minions, showed little initiative or self-confidence, instead cautiously obeying the instructions of the king. 

But let’s take a look at Burwell and see what her qualifications, other than the close fitting Obama burqa, are.   Burwell has been on the main deck during the years of fiscal and legislative doldrums.  It was her enthusiasm for following bureaucratic missives to the letter that led her to shut down government buildings, and monuments during the government slowdown.  She could have laid off 10% of the highest paid minions and solved the problems, leaving the peoples’ monuments up and running, but that would not create the, “pain” that the White House said it wanted the public to feel. 

Ms. Burwell is the archetypical bureaucrat.  She has never held a real job.  She has degrees from Harvard and Oxford, (politics, philosophy, the usual generic, “soft answers count” crap.  Being a good liberal, and holding all the right membership cards, she acquired several jobs in the Clinton administration, including deputy budget director and the Walmart Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She is one of those people who has a great resume but no yards on the ground.

But, we have to have someone in this job and I have a suggestion.  How about putting Jon Huntsman in that job?  How about Mitt Romney?  Either of these men would do a laudable job.  They would administer the office with honesty, efficiency, intelligence and autonomy. 

Look for a leader, not a follower, and keep the faith. 

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