What Do YOU Say, Barry?

So the president's nominee to be the Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson, has pulled his name from consideration.  That took place yesterday morning in the wake of an odd distribution of a list of alleged sins, given out by Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), who coincidentally is running for reelection in a state that President Trump carried strongly in 2016.

Dr. Jackson denies the allegations, including crashing a car while drunk after a Secret Service party and over-prescribing sleeping pills, calling them "false" and other things that would characterize them as having not actually happened.  I can imagine a Senate committee hearing and having to keep answering "No, that never happened and is a false and fabricated narrative" over and over to people who aren't going to vote for you anyway.

Now, the good doctor is not just "a" physician; he was the physician to three presidents, and one of those was the saint of the left, Barack Hussein Obama.  Obama was kind enough to have written glowing performance evaluations of Dr. Jackson in his position as the president's physician -- highest-grade type of thing.  Glowing reports.  No mention of sleeping pills or parties.

Barack Obama has not been a shrinking violet in his post-presidential life.  He's no Hillary Clinton, of course, grabbing the spotlight every day to defend his meager honor, but he is certainly not the Bush #43, retire-quietly-and-make-no-comments type.  Most recently, he spoke at a sports conference recently, a bit scandalous because no one was allowed to bring any recording device in, under penalty of forcible removal (someone did anyway, much to Obama's acute embarrassment when it came out what he had said).

[Aside -- as I wrote here, I was a contestant on America's Got Talent as part of a singing group about ten years back.  The day we went before the judges -- Piers Morgan, Sharon Osborne and David Hasselhoff -- we were told that we were NOT to record anything or take a recording device on stage, and particularly could not record the judges' comments.  Let the record show that I did, anyway, and yes, we got the votes to go through to the next round, and I made a recording of their comments and votes.  They heard it here first.  Sorry, Piers.]

While it is only a day since Dr. Jackson withdrew his name, I'm going to go on record and say that no one has -- and more importantly, no one will -- stick a mic under the former-presidential nose of Mr. Obama and ask for his comment.  The logical question would be this:

"Mr. Obama, Admiral Jackson was your personal physician for years, and you were so impressed by him and his performance that you gave him the highest ratings in his personnel evaluation -- the highest ratings -- and those ratings are a matter of public record.  Now he is being accused of some terrible things by your party, and he has been forced to withdraw from consideration as VA secretary.  

1. What, sir, did you miss?  
2. If you were aware of all those allegations, why did you give him such a high rating?
3. If you were unaware of them, who failed you in reporting such information?
4. If you defend your rating, then why are you not standing up for Dr. Jackson right now?

The press corps these days is not exactly the most courageous group of individuals, but I would think at least one of them would troop on down to Obama's current Shadow Government office and ask him those questions with a camera trained on the former president.

Anyone have the guts?

Copyright 2018 by Robert Sutton
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