Kathleen Sebelius is a poor choice for Health and Human Services Secretary, no matter what Obama really intends for the Department during the next four years. Sebelius is not capable of providing the dynamic and aggressive leadership required if the White House is serious about substantive and lasting healthcare reform. She also lacks the basic ability to manage money well, as she’s proved repeatedly in Kansas, so even if Obama’s rhetoric about reform is empty, Sebelius will still be at the helm of billions in spending, and she honestly can’t be trusted with all of that money.  And then there’s this, her 2008 Democratic response to George W. Bush’s last State of the Union Address:

Terrible.

Sebelius seriously needs to send as large a thank-you as she can to Bobby Jindal, because until his dismal performance last week in rebuttal to Obama, Sebelius’ 2008 embarrassment to herself was the worst SOTU response we’ve ever seen.

Just awful.

This woman is never going to set the world on fire, inspire public confidence in what will always be controversial reform, or successfully bare-knuckles brawl with lobbyists, vested interests, bureaucrats, and downright con artists standing in the way of substantive healthcare reform, let alone the universal coverage for all Americans that Democrats occasionally claim they believe in (but only Hillary Clinton has an actual record of not only working hard for, but betting everything on).

Installing Sebelius at Health and Human Services, to us, means Obama has no real intention of actually doing anything about healthcare reform.

If he was serious about this, he would have placed Governor Ed Rendell, Howard Dean, or even Republican Carly Fiorina at HHS. All three of them have reputations for hitting opponents hard, aggressively going after ineptitude and corruption, and upsetting apple carts and tipping sacred cows when need be.

Sebelius has a reputation as a boring, milquetoast, gray, uninspired career politician who, if she didn’t personally drive Kansas into the ground, certainly lacked the skill or acumen to prevent it from happening.

Will she suddently rise to the challenge and become the dynamo that’s needed at HHS?  Nothing in this world is impossible, but that seems highly unlikely.

Just like Dr. Steven Chu at Energy and Ray LaHood at Transportation, Sebelius is the wrong person for this important job.  Chu is, by all accounts, a very nice and quite brilliant man, who recently admitted he feels “like he was thrown into the deep end of the pool” and is out of his depth as the head of a massive bureaucracy (Chu even admits he was not aware the Secretary of Energy sets US oil policy, until reporters insisted this was part of his job, and Chu argued with them until the reporters proved they were right). Installing LaHood, who has a history of looking the other way in terms of graft and corruption, at Transportation, where he will almost certainly look the other way as billions in transportation dollars are wasted, was a disastrously poor decision couched under the auspice of “bipartisanship”. Nominating Sebelius as HHS Secretary makes little sense if Obama seriously intends to reform healthcare — so maybe that’s why she’s there after all.

Maybe she’s meant to do at HHS what she did in Kansas.

We’ll let Kansans voice their own opinions about that.

But, why not Howard Dean?

Dean, more than anyone, handed the nomination to Obama in 2008 by refusing to resolve the Florida and Michigan delegate counts until after Obama was effectively crowned the winner against Hillary Clinton.  Dean presided over the May 31st Rules & Bylaws Committee Meeting that actually took delegates from Clinton in Michgan and gave them to Obama, despite the fact Obama had removed his name from Michigan’s ballot.  So, Dean served Obama well as DNC Chair, with every move he made benefitting Obama and harming Clinton in some way.

So, why was Dean removed as DNC Chair, with Tim Kaine installed in his place? Why was Dean snubbed at Kaine’s announcement as DNC Chair, and not even invited to the ceremony for his successor?  Why was Dean, who very publicly said he wanted to be either Surgeon General or HHS Secretary passed over in favor of TV personality Sanjay Gupta in the former, and Sebelius in the latter?

We think most of that has to do with Rahm Emanuel, and the fact Obama appears to agree to whatever those around him tell him to do.  Emanuel has long-hated Dean, and his most defining characteristic is his off-the-charts bitchiness and vindictiveness. We believe Emanuel made sure Dean didn’t get any position in the new administration, because that’s just how Emanuel rolls.

But there’s also the consideration that Dean would have been expected to actually achieve something as HHS Secretary, considering his personality, reputation, and his drive as DNC Chair.  The same would be true for Rendell and Fiorina — great things would have been not only expected, but demanded of them.

Sebelius, thus, walks into the role as HHS Secretary with lowered expectations, and a much lower profile, so quite honestly she has the ability to fade into the background like forgettably bad wallpaper, and the administration can stop talking about healthcare reform whenever it wants to, as Sebelius is sure to never take any substantive initiative on her own and accomplish anything that would generate unwanted headlines.

Kansas will be better off without her as Governor, and we suppose HHS will be no more poorly run than the Energy or Transportation Departments are, with Chu and LaHood, respectively.

All three Departments seem destined, now, to generate more waste and missed opportunities than ever before in history. Chu sees no evil, because he has no idea what corruption and graft to look for, in a bureaucracy he’s already hopelessly lost in. LaHood speaks no evil, as he knows exactly what’s going on around him, but will never rat out corruption because it would expose his long time friends and all of their individual racquets. And now there’s Sebelius, who’ll hear no evil in the echo chamber that is HHS, and whose meek voice will never be strong enough to rise above the constant lobbyists’ din, or provide the strong voice of leadership we need to actually accomplish substantive healthcare reform.

But, like we said, we don’t believe actual reform is what Obama wants. He just wants to talk about healthcare reform without ever accomplishing anything, so he’ll have something to talk about for four years, but we’ll still be exactly where we are now in 2012.

And what better person to ensure just that than Kathleen Sebelius?