Do You Know What I Mean?

Tom Vilsack sure has made a mess in Iowa, hasn't he?

Krusty has a post today that recaps the Board Of Regents/UI President search situation. Also read Nicholas Johnson's recap from yesterday (Part IX) for even more detail.

I can't begin to speculate on what's what in this entire mess, but it sure seems to me that it all points back to Tom Vilsack.

Michael Gartner, I mean Tom Vilsack, wants a UI President with health-care experience. Well, why is that so important now when it has never been an issue in the past 150-odd years? It all goes back to the Wellmark debacle. Attorney General and Democrat Tom Miller ruled that Vilsack's appointment of John Forsyth, Wellmark's CEO, to the Board of Regents in 2003 was a serious conflict of interest. David Skorton, the only UI President with health-care experience, had problems with a contract the hospital had with Wellmark over reimbursement rates. Gartner, I mean Vilsack, didn't like that, so Skorton was dissed at raise time and was lured away to The Other Cornell.

So what's Gartner, I mean Vilsack, going to do? Gartner, I mean Vilsack, dissolves the search because his candidate, clearly a puppet for the insurance companies, wasn't on the final list. Does it get any simpler than that?

Now Vilsack, and I do mean Vilsack, can ride his white horse into Cedar Rapids (What? Are there no places in Iowa City or Coralville where he could hold meetings?) to hold some pow wow in order to mollify the dupes at the University of Iowa who threatened to impose a UN-style (read: worthless) "no confidence" vote against the Board of Regents, I mean Vilsack, although they mean Michael Gartner, but they should really mean Vilsack.

If you know what I mean.