I’m not a huge fan of the surgeon general position in the first place, which makes it a little hard for me to take Richard Carmona’s complaints seriously.

I also find his Special Olympics story a bit fishy. From the Times:

And administration officials even discouraged him from attending the Special Olympics because, he said, of that charitable organization’s longtime ties to a “prominent family” that he refused to name.
“I was specifically told by a senior person, ‘Why would you want to help those people?’ ” Dr. Carmona said.
The Special Olympics is one of the nation’s premier charitable organizations to benefit disabled people, and the Kennedys have long been deeply involved in it.
When asked after the hearing if that “prominent family” was the Kennedys, Dr. Carmona responded, “You said it. I didn’t.”

This is not a fanatically anti-Kennedy administration. Bush worked with Kennedy on education in 2001-02, on prescription drugs for much of 2003, and on immigration just weeks ago. Bush signed a bill authorizing federal funding for the Special Olympics for five years–the first time any administration had put that funding on such a secure basis–and last year had a White House event honoring both the Special Olympics and Eunice Kennedy Shriver. So I guess the administration was willing to have Bush do things with the Shrivers but not to send Carmona. Quite a snub.

Carmona’s own view of the proper role of a surgeon general suggests that he was in serious need of muzzling. Tom Firey quotes from Carmona’s five-point plan for the public health service:

Recognize and plan for the fact that tomorrow’s best hope to achieve millennium goals, extinguish asymmetries, eradicate social injustices, and make the world [a] healthier, safer and more secure place may be the newer, softer force projection of health diplomacy via prospective ongoing sustainable missions globally.

The Bush administration emerges from the Carmona story looking bad, all right–for having appointed this guy in the first place.