Tommy Thompson, consummate politician from Wisconsin, rider of Harley-Davidson motorcycles and the Department of Health and Human Services, is calling it quits.

He is going home after forty years of government service. He was elected to the state legislature when he was 24; he was governor for 14 years, and a Cabinet Secretary for a Presidential term. He is a tough guy, but a good one. He had the ability to delegate responsibility, and he is one of the most affable tough guys you’ll ever meet. He may be the last Secretary I know personally.

How that came to be is a queer story, and it revolves around the bright young people who make this town work. I knew one of the finest, and he was working himself up through the political chain in the Department. I wandered into the Hubert Humphrey Building just after 9/11 to talk to him about how the intelligence folks could help indentify the threats to public health.

There was so much to do. An entire government had to be shaken out and revamped. We had to install barriers everywhere, because that is where we suddenly realized the enemy was all around us.

I later met Tommy himself through the mechanism of the strange alternate government that came to exist after the attacks. At least one Cabinet Secretary had to be hidden away so they could assume the Presidency if someone popped a suitcase nuke downtown.

There was a time when they tracked the line of succession all the way down through the House of Representatives. I don’t know if they still do, none of my business and I have no need to know any more. But I’m sure you remember when the Vice President became famous for his periodic stays at The Undisclosed Location.

I did my time in one of the dozens of un-acknowledged facilities. My staff at Langley had been designated as the intelligence support mechanism for the post-attack world, the one that would survive after the big attack from the Soviet Union. We never did fully exercise the concept, and when the unexpected came to pass, the organization was startled to discover itself responsible for providing people to populate the undisclosed locations around the capital.

I helped to baby-sit the chiefs of Energy and Interior, Education and Veterans Affairs. That is precisely what it was, too. The Secretaries hated it. Preserving the democracy meant inconvenience and boredom. We hated it, too, since it was inconvenient and claustrophobic and boring.

What was remarkable was the moment when they would summon me down to give an intelligence update to whichever principal happened to be in residence. Some of them were quite knowledgeable and others were not. I won’t bore you with my personal assessments, and I think you can figure it out on your own. I even thought one of them was a fox.

But I digress. Tommy was one of the Secretaries who discovered the Secret World and devoured it with gusto. He had a big portfolio, one that contained a bunch of things he wasn’t expecting when he came down from Madison. He was going to attack the traditional welfare structure, an enterprise which he had managed effectively back home. He discovered the sprawling Department was in the middle of virtually everything related to how we live.

His charter was so vast that it boggles the mind. He owned the Center for Disease Control, and the Food and Drug Administration, and the Indian Health Service. He owned a couple dozen other agencies you have never heard of. He was responsible for gas-mask design, and disease surveillance in China, and the food chain north of the open-faced sandwich. Which is to say, everything edible that involves processing beyond simply melting cheese on bread.

Tommy was stung by the 9/11 attacks, and then the anthrax letters and the SARS epidemic. His campaign against obesity and in favor of fitness, was overshadowed by the fact that his Department was responsible for the Public Health in time of emergency. And trust me, there was an emergency lurking around every corner.

Tommy made a dramatic response to his response mission. There was a big conference room across the corridor from his executive office suite. There were big granite tables there, very 1970s, and used for the formal set-piece gatherings that mark the staid rhythm of the capital. The staff called the place ”Stonehenge,” partly for the furniture and partly for its relationship to the modern world.

He put a team of Public Health Service officers in there with computers and a big-screen television after the attack. When it became apparent that there might be more to emergency response than watching CNN, he directed that the whole room be gutted and created ”The Secretary’s Command Center,” a high-tech center from which he communicated with the World Health Organization and the CDC.

He lobbied for billions of dollars in federal funding to shore up the sagging U.S. public health system. He fought for better surveillance of disease outbreaks and led the charge to vaccinate the population against smallpox. That was a debacle, but it was hardly Tommy’s fault. He had been told the Bad Guys were possibly in possession of the deadly bacillus, and he was doing what he could.

I remember my service with the Secretary as one of the great times in a career. When he announced that he was leaving the cabinet, Tommy gave a warning. It was one we worried about every day on the 6 th Floor of the Hubert Humphrey Building. What was going to happen if the Bad Guys injected something awful into the food chain? It could be more devastating than a nuke going off on the National Mall.

His large hands gripped the podium as he made his announcement. He has always styled himself as a pugnacious farmer, proud of his Catholic working-class roots. He looked into the cameras and the moon-like faces gazing up at him. He talked about SARS and the pandemics to come out of Asia. He talked about the work he had not completed, and the tasks left to be done.

Then he got to the main event. ”For the life of me,” Tommy said, ”I cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply because it is so easy to do.”

The statement caused quite a stir. Someone I know accused him of revealing state secrets. As if the Bad Guys didn’t know how vulnerable we are. Hell, at one point in the panic someone in a position to know claimed that there were Bad Guy sympathizers actually working as food inspectors.

So I think Tommy just pointed out something useful. Watch what you eat, look at where it is coming from. I hope Tommy is back as a Senator, soon. I’d be happy to work for him any time. I’m also pleased that they are talking about naming Mark McClellan as Tommy’s relief. Mark used to head the FDA, and he is a doctor.

It might be a useful thing to have a doctor as the Secretary of Health and Human Services, considering the possibilities.

Copyright 2004 Vic Socotra

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