Enablers, accomplices, and America’s unhealth: How RFK Jr. makes the US sick - opinion

As a physician and chairman of the Senate Health Committee, the Louisiana Republican knew better. He could have stopped it. He could have spoken out, but he lacked the courage. He is intelligent, thoughtful, and respected by his colleagues. But in perhaps the most critical vote of his public career, he failed and became the leading enabler of what history will remember as the worst HHS leader in history. He betrayed his oath as a senator and his oath as a doctor.

The vote to confirm Kennedy was 52-48, with one Republican joining all Democrats in opposition. The lone holdout was Sen. Mitch McConnell from Kentucky, a polio survivor. Had Cassidy spoken out and lobbied his colleagues, it is likely he could have blocked the confirmation. He had the expertise and respect to have pulled it off; pity he just didn’t have the courage.

Fault also lies with other Republican senators who may have had misgivings – Susan Collins, Thom Tillis, Charles Grassley, Josh Hawley – but put their fear of a vindictive president ahead of the national health interest. Left unchecked, Kennedy could become America’s greatest mass killer, and they are his accomplices.

Cassidy, although a vaccine advocate himself, felt confident he could harness the worst impulses of the anti-vaxxer and his flock of quacks. He assured colleagues he found parts of Kennedy’s agenda appealing and felt they could “have a great relationship to make America healthy again.”

Instead, Kennedy seems to operate with virtually no constraints. Cassidy may be awakening to the crisis he helped create after it was brought to a head last week by the firing of respected veteran scientist Susan Monarez as director of the Centers for Disease Control. She was removed after only weeks on the job because she refused to go along with Kennedy’s new restrictive Covid vaccine policies. Several top CDC officials resigned in protest.

Kennedy has drastically slashed budgets and purged not only the CDC, but also the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and other HHS agencies of top leaders, scientists, researchers, and numerous health professionals. Many not forced out have quit in protest rather than succumb to Kennedy’s political interference. He is creating a brain drain as many talented professionals leave for jobs in industry and abroad.

I fear Cassidy’s vote may have represented less faith in Kennedy’s ability to make America healthy again than fear of Donald Trump’s ability to make the senator’s bid for a third term unhealthy. After all, he had voted to convict Trump after his second impeachment in 2021, putting him in the line of fire of this most vindictive president.

Cassidy may finally be taking notice. He will have a chance to show that this week when the Senate Finance Committee, on which he sits, is scheduled to hear from Kennedy on Trump’s health agenda. It remains to be seen whether the pivotal vote caster will follow through on his timid X posting that Monarez’s firing “will require oversight” and actually hold serious hearings.

Cassidy wants the CDC to postpone its next vaccine advisory committee meeting. This will test the senator’s seriousness and whether Kennedy cares what Cassidy says.

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, former chair of the Health Committee and its leading minority member, has called for Kennedy to resign. He cited “overwhelming opposition of the medical community” to Kennedy’s anti-vax campaign and conspiracy theories, and accused him of waging “ a full-blown war on science, on public health, and on truth itself.”

The Louisiana senior senator is a symbol of what is wrong with American politics. A good, well-intentioned person who, when courage was called for, turned and ran. Cassidy could have blocked the nomination, spoken out, rallied a handful of his colleagues with a conscience, and been a leader instead of a lackey.

It’s not too late for him to go from enabler to enforcer. After all, that’s his job. The Constitution charges the Senate to advise and consent on presidential nominations, not be a rubber stamp. It is also the Congress’s duty to make sure the Executive Branch will “faithfully execute the laws” Congress enacted.

This requires a bipartisan solution, admittedly a difficult task in the currently polarized atmosphere. Elections have consequences; senators have responsibilities. Presidents get to pick their own teams, but the Senate has the final say on many appointments. Politicians want to be loyal to a president of their own party, but it must not be blind loyalty. The Constitution makes the Congress a co-equal branch of government with the responsibility to oversee the other two.

Sadly, Sen. Cassidy’s Louisiana colleague, House Speaker Mike Johnson is a sycophantic enabler who seems unable to comprehend that simple civics lesson about separation of power, which is particularly egregious because he claims to be a constitutional lawyer. In his view, Kennedy is “doing a great job” of “getting America healthy again” and he has no plans to make sure that this  is true. Johnson intends to “stay in my lane” and “let the Cabinet do their job.” He must have skipped that day in law school when Article I was discussed.

Many of Cassidy’s colleagues on both sides of the aisle, however, are beginning to understand the need for more serious oversight and to erect some guardrails on presidential power.

I expect nothing can happen until we have divided government to forge bipartisan solutions – it makes little difference which party controls which branch. Only then can the public debate begin in earnest and some meaningful steps be taken to restore the Constitutional balance of power before the country slips deeper into neo-fascist authoritarianism and the health gains of the past century evaporate.