The real problems with the nomination of Ronny Jackson to be Secretary of Veterans Affairs

After the committee vote on Donald Trump's nomination of Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson to become the next Secretary of Veterans Affairs was postponed, the new allegations regarding Dr. Jackson continued to pour in.  He allegedly handed out opioid medications like candy.  He banged on a hotel room of a woman on a presidential trip so loudly that the Secret Service was worried he would awaken then-President Barrack Obama.

But those aren't the real problems with this nomination.  The truth is that this man is not qualified and does not have the experience to run a large government agency.  How big is the VA?  It employs over 375,000 people.  In FY 2016 it had a budget of more than $270 billion.  It is a gigantic bureaucracy.  Dr. Jackson oversees roughly two dozen other people in the White House Medical Unit.  He's never commanded a unit of more than 50 personnel.  Donald Trump may consider him a superior physician but that doesn't qualify him to run the VA.  

There have been nine previous men who've held the position of Secretary of Veterans Affairs since the cabinet level post was created in 1989.  The first person to hold the job was a veteran and a politician who served in Congress for more than two decades.  Edward Derwinski's tenure in the job was unremarkable.  

President Bill Clinton appointed his replacement, Jesse Brown.  Brown was also a veteran who had been active in the Disabled American Veterans, a Veteran Service Organization.  He expanded VA services offered to women, homeless veterans and victims of exposure to chemical agents (like Agent Orange).

It isn't required to be a veteran to be effective in running this agency.  The requirements to be effective are management skills, as running an organization this size cannot be done by a micromanager.  It requires the skill of advocating for the people who are charged with caring for our nation's veterans, as proven by one of the finest commanders I ever served under.  I thought I'd written about the big Sortie Goal sign in a previous blog, but I can't find that one.  I'll re-tell that tale another time.  Suffice it to say the lesson learned was that when you take care of the people, they take care of the mission.  So whoever winds up in this job needs to take care of the hundreds of thousands of folks who work for the agency.

A doctor who is charming and willing to tell the public that a president whose diet is limited to fast food and whose exercise regimen has left him unable to walk 700 yards without a golf cart might live to be 200 may be great at what Trump refers to as "truthful hyperbole" but is not a qualification to run the VA.

The worst part is that Trump and his minions are letting this man twist in the wind of speculation about the shortcomings that are not the real reason he is unqualified to serve in the post he's been nominated to fill.