What
this country needs is a wealthy, privileged, power-hungry leader
with a huge ego. I don’t think
that, but it sure seems like Dr. Benjamin Carson does. What’s more, he means
himself.
In his article on the front page of today’s (3/21) New
York Times, Trip Gabriel calls Dr. Carson, the newest star of conservative
politics because he’s “A renowned neurosurgeon who is black and has the
credibility to attack the president on health care.” He’s definitely a renowned
neurosurgeon because the man who hired him says so. If you don’t believe Dr.
Donlin Long, a retired chairman of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins, listen to Dr.
Carson himself. His 1996 autobiography, “Gifted Hands,” became a movie starring
Cuba Gooding, Jr. If neither is sufficient (or, shall we say, disinterested)
look at his achievements. “He gained fame for a series of operations separating
conjoined twins, long and risky procedures that do not always succeed.” It’s
not every doctor who gets Gabriel to blow his horn. Nor is it every risky
operation that makes you famous even if it doesn’t succeed. (Although, with
respect to his career, you could say that all his operations succeeded.)
More
amazing to me than separating conjoined twins is how little being
a doctor qualifies you for besides practicing medicine. Certainly not for
discussing health care policy. Consider Dr. Carson’s comments to Mr. Gabriel. “Most people could pay most of their bills
through health savings account, he said in his office. He would eliminate
Medicaid and Medicare, and for the poor, government would make the
contributions to their health accounts.” What if, say, you’re conjoined twins
and need the most complicated and expensive procedure known to man? “The
difference could be made up by catastrophic care insurance.” In all fairness,
this may not be as simple-minded and out-of-touch as it appears. A similar plan
was proposed, years ago, by The Tooth Fairy and is very popular among children.
Okay,
health care policy may not be his strength. How about taxes? “You make $10 billion, you put in a billion; you make
$10, you put in 1, Dr. Carson explained at the prayer breakfast. Now, some
people say that’s not fair because it doesn’t hurt the guy who made $10
billion as much as it hurts the guy who makes 10. Where does it say you’ve got
to hurt the guy?” First, Mitt Romney wouldn’t say that to a group of campaign
donors in his living room and
second, prayer breakfast? I’ll assume that isn’t a cereal called Wafers (“Now,
with more Communion!”)
If
you’re thinking, “That’s the kind of man we need to run the country” then you’re not only agreeing with Dr.
Carson, but with an editorial in the Wall Street Journal that declared, “Ben
Carson for President.” I’ll confess I haven’t read the editorial, but I have a
good reason. I’m too busy imagining Dr. Carson getting his “gifted hands” on
foreign policy or placing one “gifted” finger on “The Button.” It isn’t pretty.
What
could possibly explain this man’s appeal- his dramatic hold - on political conservatives? Alex
Castellanos, a Republican consultant, thinks he knows. “Anybody who is serious
and thoughtful and an antipolitician is the opposite of the mess we’ve got now.
If you can separate two Siamese twins, maybe you can separate Democrats and Republicans in
Washington.” Separate . . . huh? I challenge Dr. Carson himself to find a brain
in this man’s head.
Too
many experts, that’s the problem. What does the common man think of Dr.
Benjamin Carson? Quite a lot according to, well, Dr. Carson. “He told the
Conservative Political Action Conference that some of his most poignant
feedback came ‘From older Americans who said they had given up and they were waiting to die and now
they felt a sense of revival once again.’” Even by the standards of political
and surgical egos, which sets the bar somewhere above Mars, that’s a whopper.
This doctor thinks he can bring people back from the dead. The last doctor who
thought that had his attitude
adjusted by Boris Karloff.
So,
if political conservatives are infatuated with Dr. Carson and it’s not because
he’s a “renowned neurosurgeon” or “has the credibility(!) to attack President
Obama on health care,” then, going back to Trip Gabriel’s original description,
it must be because he’s “black.” If so, that would make him the new Herman
Cain, the novo-cain. A millionaire executive at the top of his field, who
believes in a flat tax and is threatened by the Affordable Health Care Act. The
only difference is that Dr. Benjamin Carson may know where
“Uzbecky-becky-stan-stan” is. He’s probably had patients from there. I wish him
the same success.
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