Shortly after Tom Vilsack became President Obama’s
Secretary of Agriculture, he told a small group of us about his job interview
with the then President Elect. “He said to me ‘at the USDA you are going to be
responsible for farmers and commodities and forests, and many other pressing matters
but the first and most important thing I want you to do is to make sure that all
of our children are fed.’”
With
the Secretary of Agriculture being one of the last remaining cabinet positions
for President-Elect Trump to fill, one can only hope that a similar
conversation is taking place. But amid
all of the talk about dealmakers, and conflicts of interest, and the importance
of who “looks the part”, it’s a bit hard to imagine.
Not
much has been heard about vulnerable children from the parade of office seekers
coming and going from Trump Tower and Mar-A-Lago. That’s a shame because America’s children are
hurting with nearly 20% of them living below the poverty line. When our kids
are compromised in terms of their nutrition, health and educational achievement,
our economic competitiveness and national security are compromised as well.
President Obama set the
bar high with his appointments. Secretary Vilsack and the team he assembled remained
faithful to the charge of protecting the most vulnerable. In my 30 years in
Washington, Tom Vilsack strikes me as a rare public servant who combines
compassion with competence, and empathy with effective executive leadership. Child poverty rates improved during his tenure
and the percentage of children living in households with the kinds of very low
food security that means missed meals, fell to one of the lowest levels
recorded.
But there is still a
long way to go. We can only hope that someone senior in the new Administration
will have a story similar to Secretary Vilsack’s about a new president urging
him to put children’s interests ahead of the special interests. If not, the rest of us must.
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