There was a hint of frustration in a New York Times headline about Scott Gottlieb, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and an appoint­ee of Donald Trump: “F.D.A. Chief Goes Against the Administration Stereotype.” The story’s conclusion that “Dr. Scott Gottlieb isn’t rolling back his agency’s mission” was a lament of sorts, an admission that the “millionaire with a libertarian bent” running the nation’s food and drug safety agency maybe wasn’t so bad. An April piece for Vox, the “explainer” site written by and for earnest, pointy-headed liberals, even conceded that Gottlieb had been “making real progress tackling the most serious health issues in America.”

“I think it is clear that he is someone who believes in the mission of the agency and believes in its functions,” Jeremy Sharp, a deputy commissioner at the FDA during the Obama administration, tells me. Another former deputy commissioner under Obama, Joshua Sharfstein, told Vox, “I think that he’s done a lot for FDA’s morale at a time like this.”