President Obama should have chosen the first time around the man who would be far and away the best choice to run the Department of Health and Human Services -- physician and former Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber -- instead of Beltway fixer and climber Tom Daschle.

Dr. Kitzhaber is a brilliant doctor who knows the health-care system inside and out. And he is a superb and honest administrator who helped create and implement the Oregon health-care system, perhaps the best in the nation. He is both practical and visionary.

Unlike the likes of Tom Daschle, Dr. Kitzhaber has shown little interest in being a Washington fat cat, or indeed in moving far away from his favorite fishing places in the west. But maybe Mr. Obama can appeal to his patriotism in taking a job to fix the Western World's worst health-care system -- a system whose decline into chaos, red tape and greed is literally killing many thousands of Americans a year and making many companies uncompetitive in the world marketplace.

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