One of my Public Health heroes is George Plain MD, who served as the Health Officer for St. Joseph County (South Bend, Indiana) when I worked for the State Board of Health in Indianapolis in the 1980s.
Dr. Plain was a successful general surgeon in South Bend, with a long-time interest in Public Health. He served on the county Board of Health, sometimes as its chairman.
Surgery requires superbly performing hands and eyes, not just brains. As a middle-aged surgeon, Dr. Plain recruited a committee of friends and colleagues. He asked this committee to meet at least once a year, and to tell him honestly when it was time to retire from surgery. Eventually they did.
That’s when the next phase of Dr. Plain’s career started. His county needed a Health Officer. Dr. Plain had an excellent brain and the experience to use it wisely. His hands and eyes didn’t need to be superb — just good enough. He already knew how to make decisions and when to consult with others.
When I arrived at the State Board of Health, I assessed Dr. Plain as being one of the two or three best Health Officers in Indiana. He eventually told me that he had appointed a second committee — this one was to tell him when it was time to retire as Health Officer, so the Board of Health didn’t have to.
Years after I left Indiana, it was time. Dr. Plain retired with dignity, and was honored for his lifetime of public service.
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I see parallels between Dr. Plain’s situation and Joe Biden’s.
Being a successful President requires the vital skill sets of hiring the best; managing the egos and technical “blind spots” of the world’s most complex team; setting an overall direction for national policy; making sure someone can speak for the Administration about every important issue; and getting a distracted Congress to make reasonably wise decisions in a reasonably timely way. By almost all these measures, I believe Biden has been a successful President.
Being a successful presidential candidate requires additional skills of explanation and debate. Those skills aren’t needed to govern effectively, but they are required in order to get elected.
If Joe Biden isn’t re-elected, it doesn’t matter how well he has governed. If he can’t campaign as effectively as Harry Truman in 1948, he won’t be re-elected. This is reality. Neither he nor we should deny it.
We can and should honor Joe Biden’s lifetime of service. We can and should seek to carry forward the good ideas he championed.
And, for the love of America and its founding ideas, we should pray that Joe Biden gets good advice from God Almighty — and from his political party.