Making America Healthy Should Be a Bipartisan Challenge

There are many intriguing mansions in the great house of MAGA but perhaps the most intriguing of all has its own name: MAHA or Make America Healthy Again. America undeniably suffers from a serious health crisis: Almost half of Americans have high blood pressure, three-quarters are obese or overweight, and 15% have type 2 diabetes. Previous attempts to improve these figures have been frustrated, despite the liberal application of the world’s best brains. Can America’s eccentric new health and human services secretary succeed where so many of his sensible predecessors have failed?

There are obvious reasons for doubt. Donald Trump’s pick for the job is, to put it mildly, an oddball: a scion of the Kennedy dynasty, a reformed heroin addict and womanizer, a devotee of odd diets such as raw milk, and a manchild given to strange practical jokes such as dumping a dead bear cub in Central Park, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is that worst of all combinations, a crank and a lawyer.