Kathleen Sebelius, Obamacare’s Worst Flack

Obama administration Health and Human Services
(HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius submitted her resignation
yesterday, as Scott Shackford already noted. For the last four
years, Sebelius has been the face of Obamacare, and
the New York Times story on her exit strongly implies
that, while she wasn’t technically fired, she left at least in part
because the administration had lost confidence in her ability to
deliver following the spectacularly botched rollout of
Healthcare.gov last fall.

Even the statement by White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough
on her replacement, current Office of Management and Budget Chief
Syliva Burwell, sounds more like a knife in the back than a fond
farewell. “The president wants to make sure we have a proven
manager and relentless implementer in the job over there, which is
why he is going to nominate Sylvia,” McDonough said on
Thursday.

The clear implication here is that Sebelius was none of those
things. And certainly, judging by last October’s botched launch of
the federal health insurance exchange, it’s an easy and obvious
judgment to make about her work for the administration.

But it’s also worth asking what Sebelius really did as HHS
Secretary. She was widely known as the front person for Obamacare,
but much of the administrative effort was actually run through
Nancy-Ann DeParle, who
until last January ran the White House Office of Health
Reform.

Sebelius wasn’t Obama’s first choice for the job. The president
initially nominated Tom Daschle, a move that he eventually
admitted was a screw-up when reports surfaced that Daschle owed
$140,000 in back taxes.

From the outside, then, Sebelius mostly seemed to play the role
of a glorified flack for the president’s health care policies,
dutifully making the rounds and mouthing talking points as
necessary. And she wasn’t even good at this. Her responses at
congressional hearings were so canned that they might have come
from a phone-mail system, and they occasionally
revealed that she didn’t quite know what she was talking about.
Her speeches were ho-hum pablum, when they weren’t being quietly
edited after the fact due to unverifiable claims.When she went
on offense during the 2012 campaign, she was often wrong
or misleading. She engaged in
ethically dubious fundraising for outside groups that support
Obamacare.

In the last few months, as a spokesperson for the health law,
she’s made a fool of herself and the administration. She kicked off
the launch of the exchanges with a
disastrous, embarrassing interview on The Daily Show,
hosted insurance sign-up events
where no one could sign up for insurance, and responded to

basic questions about Obamacare’s continued poor poll numbers
with blank silence. Fitting, I suppose, given that Sebelius has
never been one for worthwhile answers.

Maybe—probably—Sebelius doesn’t deserve all or even the majority
of the blame for the administration’s health law screw-ups. But
regardless of her impact, as the most visible official associated
with the law aside from President Obama, she deserved to be shown
the door—or at least be given the opportunity to show herself
out.