Rachel Levine’s Only Qualification Was Punching The Diversity Ticket
Being transgender shouldn’t bar one from office, but neither should it be a reason to give an incompetent and corrupt medical official a job.
By Jonathan S. Tobin
March 31, 2021
Sens. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., and Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, said they wouldn’t vote for any non-diverse — i.e., white male — presidential nominees until they were convinced more non-white people would be chosen. They soon dropped their threat after receiving word a “senior level†liaison to the Asian-Pacific Islander community had been appointed.
Once you agree to the principle that the most important consideration in filling the approximately 1,250 federal jobs that need Senate approval is the race or sexual orientation of the prospective nominee, considerations of merit will always be secondary. As we’re learning, however, even some nominations that should appear to satisfy both the needs of diversity and competence aren’t what they seem.
Dr. Rachel Levine, the country’s new assistant secretary of Health and Human Services, isn’t proof of acceptance of transgender persons so much as that failing upward is possible if you punch the right identity politics ticket. On Mar. 24, Levine became the first transgender person ever to be confirmed to a federal post by the U.S. Senate by a 52-48 vote that saw Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Susan Collins, R-Maine, joining Democrats to prioritize identity politics above competence.
While Levine’s nomination was hailed by leftists as evidence Biden’s administration would be the most “diverse†in history, the tone of the confirmation debate was different. Instead of talking about how proud we should all be that a person believing he was born into the wrong sex can be named a high-ranking federal official, Levine’s supporters emphasized his medical qualifications.
A graduate of Harvard and Tulane Medical School, Levine completed a residency in pediatrics and fellowship in adolescent medicine at the prestigious Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, then went on to a fellowship in pediatrics at the same institution. Next, Levine led the adolescent medicine and eating disorders clinic at the Penn State Hershey Medical Center. In 2015, Levine was named Pennsylvania physician general by Gov. Tom Wolf, becoming the state’s health secretary in 2017.
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https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/31/rachel-levines-only-qualification-was-punching-the-diversity-ticket/
