President Barack Obama’s appointment of longtime Democratic insider Ron Klain as Ebola czar amounts to nothing more than a politicization of a world health crisis, political commentator and author Pat Buchanan said Monday on "America’s Forum" on
Newsmax TV.
"You might need an Ebola czar and you might need a doctor, but what we got is a spin doctor here," Buchanan said of
Klain, who was a former chief of staff for both Vice Presidents Joe Biden and Al Gore as well as having held a host of other political positions, including a lobbyist for Fannie Mae.
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"What I would suggest in this case, what I would have done or what I would advise the president is get someone like Gen. Leslie Groves who was in charge of the Manhattan Project. Now he knew as much as many of his scientists knew about how to build an atomic bomb. At the same time, he would knock heads and make decisions and get things done at the earliest possible time.
"You need someone or either one man or two men, the one would be the executive with authority who would say, 'Look, here's who can come out of Africa into the United States and here who is not coming until this disease is taken care of.' And the second person, I would have right at his right arm, would be someone who can tell you exactly what is happening in the field."
He characterized
Klain as "someone who works for Susan Rice. He is not an authoritative figure."
A travel ban should have been imposed in the United States as soon as officials learned how rapidly the highly contagious Ebola virus was spreading, making it a certainty that it would eventually reach America, according to Buchanan.
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"I don't understand why not," Buchanan said about the lack of any travel restrictions. "For example, people say that you need aid workers to come in and out, but even aid workers who we send in there, before they come out should have a period where they're set aside so we're sure they're not bringing it back.
"But why you would have tourists and passengers from Liberia itself when you've had 5,000 deaths, something like 10,000 incidents of the disease, and they're going to occur at the rate we are told of 10,000 a week in December. Why would people coming from an area where this thing is almost an epidemic, why would you bring folks like that into the United States?"
Buchanan also discussed President Barack Obama’s ongoing negotiations with Iran. The New York Times reported that
Obama is attempting to bypass Congress and suspend the majority of the sanctions placed on Tehran over its nuclear program.
"I favor the negotiations with Iran," he told host J.D. Hayworth. "Iran has right now the capability, if you call them a nuclear capable nation, they are it. If they went all out to build a bomb, it would take them, my guess is much more than a year to explode their first one. People may disagree with that but what we've got to get is assurances from Iran that they have no capability to do that within a certain period of time.
"Secondly, that we would know about it instantaneously if they attempted to do it, and third, I don't understand the American intelligence community unanimously said that Iran, with high confidence, Iran does not have a nuclear bomb program. They said it in 2007 and 2011. I for the life of me don't know why some Congressional committee doesn't call [Director of National Intelligence James] Clapper up and say, 'Now, tell us, are they working on a bomb? Are they not? Do they have a program? Do they not? How exactly long would it take if they suddenly went for a bomb?'
"We've got to know all these things. I'm not against the negotiations, but all of us want a solution that's a solution to this and we'll leave Iran so far away from getting the bomb that if they ever make a move, we'd have plenty of time to act."
There have been executive agreements in the past that are not considered treaties, which require two-thirds of the U.S. Senate to approve, according to Buchanan.
"Obama apparently has the authority to lift various sanctions, but not others, on his own authority basically," Buchanan said. "But my guess would be he's not going to bring back something that the Congress of the United States and the country will reject outright."
Buchanan’s latest book is
"The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose from Defeat to Create the New Majority."
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