I was out of pocket today in part because I attended Tevi Troy’s formal swearing-in ceremony as Deputy Secretary of HHS. Tevi is my oldest friend in Washington. I replaced him at the American Enterprise Institute. It’s kind of wild to think that he’s running the largest civilian bureaucracy in America, with 1 in 4 tax dollars cycling through his shop. I remember the days we spent our time debating DC vs. Marvel and pretending we understood Leo Strauss. Anyway it was very cool to watch, and a bit weird. The Commissioned Corps of the Public Health service provided an amazing amount of pomp and circumstance. Who knew Tevi gets his own flag? Anyway, it was deeply gratifying to see Tevi prosper. Being a committed conservative at a bureaucracy like HHS is ultimately a thankless effort at damage control, I suspect. But I can’t think of someone better suited to make the best of his task.

That was the good.