Ben Carson for HUD Secretary
Carson’s resume and background, as well as his support of Trump, made him Trump’s almost inevitable pick for the job:
Carson is a former director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University. In an interview with Fox News, he cited his childhood in Detroit and his experience treating inner-city patients as qualifications for the job of HUD secretary.
“I grew up in the inner city,” he said, “and have dealt with a lot of patients from that area and recognize that we cannot have a strong nation if we have weak inner cities.”…
“His health-care experience, that’s one of the areas I’m personally excited about,” said Terri Ludwig, president and CEO of Enterprise Community Partners, a nonprofit that finances and manages affordable housing. “All the evidence and research is showing that a healthy home, a healthy community can dramatically affect the trajectory of a child’s future.”
Mel Martinez, who led the agency under President George W. Bush, said Carson won’t be the first HUD secretary to have a steep learning curve.
“Did I know everything about HUD the day I walked in? No. Was I able to learn? Yes,” Martinez said. “You go to school, you learn a lot, but you also surround yourself with good people.”
“It’s terribly important to have a good, strong general counsel to make sure you keep yourself in the lanes. It’s a place with a lot challenges,” Martinez said. “It’s a very vast bureaucracy.”
It’s actually rather commonplace for someone without specific experience in a certain arena to be appointed to a Cabinet post in that area. The theory is that running something is running something, and it’s the advisors who inform a person. If that person is smart and has leadership and organizational skills, then he/she is probably good for the job.
That won’t stop some Democrats from criticizing Trump’s choice of Carson, of course. Nor will his minority status or his story of growing up in the inner city help him with them, because he’s a conservative:
Trump’s appointment of the retired neurosurgeon, who has no housing experience, drew quick condemnation from some Democrats. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called him “disturbingly unqualified” and People for the American Way said he was “dangerously unfit.”
But many Republican and Democratic housing advocates said Carson’s name recognition and close ties to the president-elect could raise the bureaucracy’s public profile at a critical time.
“Out of the last five or six HUD secretaries, you could really only point to two of them who had direct housing experience,” said Brian Montgomery, HUD assistant secretary under President George W. Bush.
He sounds like a good choice to me.
Good choise for HUD sec. Bolton for SecState and Kobach for Homeland Security.
In the UK cabinet ministers almost invariably have no experience in the area to which they are appointed as they are all either MP’s or members of the House of Lords. Often as their careers progress they will be moved from one cabinet post to another. For instance the current Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sec of Treasury) is Philip Hammond who has previously been Foreign Secretary (Sec of State), Minister of Defense and Minister of Transport.
IMO, the cabinet pick isn’t trying to run the thing. He’s trying to make it work the way the president wants it to work.
“We’ll see” how adept Carson is as an administrator. 😉
I hope that in addition to changing and running the bureaucracy, Carson might be able to inspire people and local leaders to improve their own neighborhoods. Teaching people how to improve their homes on a tiny budget gives those people a sense of accomplishment and it keeps them from letting things run down. It gives their kids a sense of neighborhood and belonging, and it helps neighbors set some behavioral standards.
Carson could bring attention to successful local projects that help the poor gentrify their own homes. Good luck, Ben.
expat,
I agree that Carson can serve as a positive role model in the inner cities. His story from ghetto to a world class neurosurgeon is a claasic story of an individual turning their life around and becoming a citizen who accomplishes great things. That he can do, but he will need assistance when it comes to administration of a large bureaucracy.
I am sure that Dr Carson is an excellent choice. If nothing else the visuals are positive.
There was one funny note in an LA News channel report of his appointment, and acceptance. The News Reader (I think the Brit term is more accurate than Anchor) stated that Dr C had initially refused a cabinet appointment due to lack of experience. I found that a very strange statement to attribute to a man who had just run for President; even stranger if he actually said it.
His public demeanor is so laid back and soft-spoken, I wonder how we fill fare. Is HUD still a subsidiary of ACORN or whoever assumed ACORN’s mantle of social justice housing?
London Trader:
Pooh-Bah.
So, we finally get to find out what 30 pieces of silver Dr Carson got for prostrating himself before Trump prior to attacking Cruz to Trump’s benefit early in the campaign. After the vicious, nasty things Trump said about him, if I had been Carson, I would have asked for a one-on-one private meeting with Trump, so I could bloody his nose without any witnesses present.
Seems like a lousy choice. I doubt that he has an aptitude for politics or running a bureaucracy, and if his campaign is any indication, he’s not someone to study up on a subject that doesn’t interest him.
Neo, another example of Gilbert & Sullivan commenting on rising in British bureaucracy is When I was Lad. from H.M.S. Pinafore.
As one of Trump’s more libertarian/small government supporters, I would rather have this entire office axed. No need for this stuff to be run from Washington.
Here is a City Journal piece on needed canges at HUD:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/laying-new-foundation-hud-14884.html
BTW, if I recall correctly, Carson’s separation of the brains in Siamese twins was done in Germany. Not only did he have to organize the large teams of doctors to get through every step of the operation, he had to do it with people in Germany. It sounds like he knows how to pay attention to details.
Liberal = Bear Ill
conservative = Craven Soviet
Gee, I wish he had some relevant experience as a community organizer or something. Then we’d know he’d been prepared for the job.
AVI and expat,
You miss the point. HUD is a giantic bureaucratic entrenched mess beholden only to itself.To clean house requires something beyond Carson’s previous experience. He will need someone familiar with unraveling the rats’ nest. That does not make him unqualified, few cabinet members enter the job understanding the tangle of the rats’ nest. Most look no further than the surface.
@parker – agree. I’ve seen the insides of similar bureaucracies, and it is nothing like organizing a team of surgeons.
Carson is smart and does demonstrate some management skills. I hope they are enough, with the right support, to make the changes we’d / he’d like to see.
Carson is that religious nut Trum talked about.
Carson also rejected previous postings because he knows what a government bureaucracy is, and for a Christian like Carson, working under Caesar generally isn’t all that effective.
Unless Trum can guarantee that Carson can make a real difference without government “restrictions” put on him, Carson will have to do some hard praying on this issue.