The Vaccine Is Ready. The Committee Isn’t.

The Guardian reports that Kennedy hasn't reconstituted the vaccine advisory committee after a court halted his changes, leaving new recommendations stalled.

There is a special kind of government efficiency in removing the people who do a job and then observing that the job has become rather quiet.

No tiresome discussion. No inconvenient agenda. No experts arriving with questions that cannot be answered by declaring the meeting a triumph. An empty chair has never challenged a secretary's understanding of the material. On the most accommodating personnel policy imaginable, it is the ideal appointment.

Unfortunately, a committee exists because some decisions require work. Its purpose is not to provide a picturesque background for the person who controls the appointments. The public is entitled to the work, even when the official would find the background more agreeable without workers in it.

That is the difference between a political dispute and an excuse to leave the machinery idle. Argue about the proper decision. Explain the evidence. Defend a proposed change. But making the process unavailable does not win the argument. It makes everyone who needs a decision wait for the argument to become administratively convenient.

The empty seat is the easiest part of the arrangement to overlook. It draws no salary in our imaginary efficiency brochure. It produces no embarrassing quotation. It never leaks.

It also never does the job.

If a secretary wants credit for taking charge, the minimum requirement should be that the department remains capable of doing something while he is in charge.