Sometime between 2005 and 2009, I was at Knuckleheads in Kansas City’s East Bottoms and rubbed elbows (almost) with a celebrity.
On the dance floor next to me was then Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and her husband, K. Gary Sebelius.
I was pretty impressed…not just that I was in proximity to the Kansas governor but also because she and her husband were “out amongst them,” as we used to say, at an everyday establishment for everyday people.
I say it was sometime between 2005 and 2009 because those were the years that Matt Blount was governor of Missouri. A one-time, political flame-out was Blount, if you remember him at all.
So, word gets to the band leader that the Kansas governor is in the house, and after one song, the band leader announces, “The governor is with us…the good governor.”
She got a nice round of applause, and everyone went back to dancing, and most people left her and her husband alone, except for one guy who took advantage of her accessibility and bent her ear for too long a time.
Partly because of that occasion and partly because of the composed and confident manner in which she, a Democrat, carried herself amid the Railing Republicans of Kansas, I always liked Sebelius. So, I was disappointed this morning when I read she was resigning as Secretary of Health and Human Services, a job she had held since 2009.
Yeah, she screwed up by not getting the best computer wonk in the country to oversee the healthcare.gov sign-up. And, yes, she didn’t always say the right thing (insisting, for example, that the website had not crashed — just going slowly, she said — when it most certainly had).
But, still, she always carried herself with that composure that had long appealed to voters in bloody-red Kansas. And she had some notable accomplishments.
The New York Times’ story about her resignation included this noteworthy paragraph:
“White House officials were quick to point out the many successes during Ms. Sebelius’s tenure: the end to pre-existing conditions as a bar to insurance, the ability for young people to stay on their parents’ insurance, and the reduction in the growth of health care costs. In addition, Ms. Sebelius helped push through mental health parity in insurance plans and worked with the Department of Education to promote early childhood education.”
As I have said here before, the changes on pre-existing conditions and allowing young people to stay on their parents’ insurance until they were 26 have been a godsend to our family, and I will always be thankful to Sebelius and the Obama administration for that — and I’m sure millions of other Americans agree.
You’ve got to like the classy way in which she resigned, too. No big to-do. Not to the shrieks of the Railing Republicans. Just in her normal, composed way.
Quoting again from The Times…
“Last month, Ms. Sebelius approached Mr. Obama and began a series of conversations about her future…The secretary told the president that the March 31 deadline for sign-ups under the health care law — and rising enrollment numbers — provided an opportunity for change, and that he would be best served by someone who was not the target of so much political ire.”
She had a nice touch, too, in an interview with an NYT reporter, whom she told that she had always known she would not “be here to turn out the lights in 2017.”
Well, in my opinion, the best political light that Kansas has seen in many years has now been clicked off. The Railing Republicans are no doubt happy today.
But Sebelius is probably happy, too. She’s 65, has had a hell of a political career and can go out with her head held high. Unfortunately, she had one big screw-up that blemished her career and that will be long remembered.
But haven’t we all had big screw-ups? I sure did, but because I was not operating under arc lights, I weathered most of the ensuing storms pretty well. In 2006, at age 60, I retired from a business that was about to go over the precipice…although I certainly didn’t realize it. But I got my pizza and sheet-cake party. Wooo-hooo! I’ve had a great retirement, and I wish the same for Kathleen Sebelius.
Hope to see you on the dance floor, Gov!
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Jim:
Great column! Yes, Kathleen Sebelius is a class act and always has been.
Great story about running into her and her husband on the dance floor at
Knuckleheads, no less!
All best,
Laura
Thanks, Laura. I’m glad a friendly voice weighed in first.
The great business leaders always have an innate sense that makes them great. And it’s very simple: they know what they don’t know. Then, they find people who do.
It was so obvious from the very beginning of the healthcare debate that the current administration — Ms. Sebelius included — didn’t have a clue about the impact of the changes they were creating and the design and construction of a commerce tool — the website — to implement them. Could any business survive after spending more than $500 million dollars on developing a website?
I agree that the changes to the pre-existing condition hurdle and the inclusion of children on parent’s policies are good things, as are mental health parity and better early childhood education. But these simple adjustments could have been accomplished with a fraction of the acrimony and unintended consequences we now know as Obamacare.
I also agree that Ms. Sebelius is a lovely person — I have met her. And like most of her cohorts in Washington, she’s obviously a very bright person.
But why don’t they know what they don’t know?
GM CEO Mary Barra gets tarred and feathered–only on the job a few months, for an issue that had been known for years. She was a bad spokesperson at her hearing over the issues.
And Sebelius is praised? Granted the life and death issues are different, but the management and leadership aspect? Seems like a double standard to me.
Sebelius has shot her foot full of enough holes without your help Fitz.
Toni Townes-Whitley’s company, from Canada, CGI FEDERAL, received the work from the United States by way of her relationship with Michelle Obama.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/whitley.asp
No bids were secured and when the ball was handed off to Sebelius, her efforts were reminiscent of the great Leon Lett.
The absolutely Owellian and prepoesterous headlines in the Main Stream Media, that have Sebelius stepping down at this time, due to the success of the recent sign ups, that are supposed to reach 7.1 million, would be hilarious if this narrative were not taken so serioulsy by so many, by way of legerdemain by so few. The 4th estate, such as it is, in conjuction with the facists fiats extemporaneously delivered as needed (Got an election coming up? No problem, change the dates, the rules, the law itself in order to manipulate the electorate, the polls and the election.), have disgraced themselves no less that K.S. herself.
Pass the kool aid.
While I was not impressed with Sebeljevich when she was Insurance Commissioner, I was hopeful when she became governor that we would get at least a temporary reprieve from the incessant corruption and scandals of the Graves and his cronies. That hope was short lived, as we found out that she had clearly anticipated the offer. Perhaps the three aspects of her administration that should have sent up red flags as to how she would run HHS were the loading of the Kansas bench with political hacks, cronies and major donors (leaving me wondering why she also didn’t suffer the fate of her Illini brethren), her slavish pandering to the abortion industry and, most significantly for her federal endeavors, her attempt to sellout KU hospital’s profit centers to her Missouri benefactors. thwarted only by the courageous journalistic efforts of Dolph Simons at the Lawrence Journal World.
Perhaps her most lasting damage to the citizens of Kansas are the hordes of slime that she appointed to the Kansas bench. Few realize just how far left the Johnson County bench became under her regime. Virtually every candidate put forth by JOCO’s laughable “Merit” system during her tenure was packed with the aforementioned political hacks, cronies and major donors. For instance, in 2004 JOCO appointed two judges, both from Dennis Moore’s former law firm, in another case, two of the top three candidates were major donors to her campaign and the biggest spender one the position. And the last of her appointees to the JOCO bench and the last of her appointees to the 7 Dwarfs of the Kansas Supreme Court both came from the law firm of the then chair of the Kansas Democrat party Larry Gates. The ongoing financial benefits that accrue to any firm having such powerful former colleagues on the bench should be obvious.
In addition to the rainmaker from Mr. Gates’ office her appointees to the 7 Dwarfs are even more disgraceful. Lawton Nuss was a plaintiff’s attorney on the Montoy suit, was appointed by Sebeljevich as a justice whereupon he not only failed to recuse himself from the case when it came before them but indeed enmeshed himself even further in the process by having ex partee discussions with legislators, a true scumbag. Or take the case of Carol Beier, yet another fish flipped to the abortion industry. Beier’s claim to fame since being on the bench have been her fervent efforts to crush any investigation of the abortion industry, and an outburst that was so childish and unprofessional that even others of this unelected, unrepresentative pack of tyrants felt called to chastise her for it.
As a majority on the Supremes, they have transformed the rule of law in Kansas into a pathetic joke. They enforce the laws the like and ignore the ones they don’t. They have never met a baby they wouldn’t kill, or a killer they wouldn’t baby. Despite being overturned (thanks to Phill Kline) on their idiotic decision to try and eliminate the death penalty in Kansas, they have simply ignored the ruling and have de facto eliminated it by overturning murder cases and dragging their feet so long on hear appeals that those given a death penalty in Kansas are far more likely to die of old age than ever be executed.
Appointing ideological slugs like Beiers (and others like Moriarty in JOCO) was simply the tip of the iceberg for Sebeljevich’s sellout to the abortion industry. Perhaps the most symbolic event occurred when she held a sumptuous reception of lobster and steak at the Governor’s mansion for George Tiller at a time when he was under criminal investigation for his abortion related activities. In addition, she promoted other ethically questionable candidates like Paul “the great tattoo” Morrison to be Kansas’ AG and then when he resigned in disgrace, appointed Steve Six to replace him. So tainted was Six that when he was later put up for the federal bench by the Obama regime that both Kansas Senators broke with tradition and refused to support his nomination.
Even more relevant for her credential as head of HHS was the scandal over her attempt to eviscerate KU Hospital’s profit centers, sending them across the state line, but leaving the non-profitable programs back in Kansas for our taxpayers to subsidize. The campaign to thwart activities that included illegal meetings and various other shenanigans that resulted in the woman who rescued the hospital from sure bankruptcy leaving for another position and chaos in the med school was no right-wing conspiracy, indeed, far from it. The campaign was carried out largely in the pages of The Lawrence Journal World through the columns of publisher Dolph Simons and his reporters. Those writings were reinforced in the comments below by anonymous liberal insiders who denounced Sebeljevich as the Kansas Governor who had become a Missouri whore, leading to the more general appellation of “Governor Roundheels.”
Conservatives seemed either oblivious to the controversy, or confused as to any interests they might have had in the outcome. Fortunately for Kansans, Dolph Simons and the Journal World in one of the finest demonstrations of the power of investigative journalism I’ve seen since living here managed to thwart her ultimate goal and contained most of the damage.
So, far from classy lady, Sebeljevich should go down as arguably one of the most incompetent and corrupt governors in the history of the state. Those same qualities are what led to her downfall in DC. She caused one controversy after another by trying to cram abortion down the throats of religious groups. She tried to get her pal Six appointed to the federal bench. And, she gave sweetheart deals (as Chuck describes) for Deathcare’s web site to regime croines.
Had the media been paying attention instead of favorites, her flaws might have been anticipated and Kansas and the Obama regime might have been spared the embarrassment of her continuing incompetence and ethical lapses, but as usual journalism fell by the wayside as the press focused more on promoting a leftist agenda instead of serving the public interest.
As always, I demonstrate the great value a copy editor has to any written effort.