To beat full-spectrum leftism of the sort that Democrats have infected the agency with, you need a full-spectrum conservative. Kennedy, whatever his virtues, is not that.

Over the weekend, an image of a confused and perhaps dejected Robert F. Kennedy Jr. holding a hamburger on a private plane with Donald Trumps Sr. and Jr., Elon Musk, and House speaker Mike Johnson went viral (inviting unexpected comparisons). Johnson subsequently confirmed that Kennedy, a notably health-conscious individual who recently criticized Trump’s diet, took a few bites.

There are more serious reasons than this to worry about Kennedy’s mettle as Trump’s nominee for secretary of health and human services. Kennedy has spoken out in a welcome fashion on certain public-health issues, such as obesity, government dietary guidelines, and Covid-19. There is a case for him to be meaningfully involved in our public-health apparatus in a more targeted role, directly related to one of these priorities. But someone who has recently advocated full-term abortion and socialized medicine will probably fail “either from lack of commitment or lack of principle to dislodge the leftism that Democratic administrations have infected it with,” as I wrote on Sunday.

Abortion is especially concerning. Offering a list of questions for Kennedy, Michael J. New makes clear how extensively implicated HHS now is in abortion-related matters. At the very least, some Republican senator should ask him how he plans to use the agency’s power in this area. Both New and our former National Review colleague Alexandra DeSanctis, who calls Kennedy’s nomination a “disaster for the pro-life cause,” raise an issue I hadn’t considered. I had suggested putting Kennedy in charge of the Food and Drug Administration, a role that would be more suited to his interests. But the FDA is involved in abortion as well. As DeSanctis explains:

What’s more, instating a pro-abortion HHS secretary makes it highly unlikely that the incoming administration will make any progress on reversing the disastrous pro-abortion policies of the Food and Drug Administration, an HHS agency. Kennedy’s statements about how he would consider regulating abortion, if at all, suggest he must be entirely supportive of chemical abortions, which occur earlier in pregnancy. But an essential aim of a pro-life administration ought to be undoing the FDA’s dangerous changes to the safety regulations for chemical-abortion drugs. Chemical abortions now account for about two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S., and while it’s technically a violation of federal law to send these drugs via the postal service, loosened FDA regulations have enabled women to obtain them online and receive them in the mail without ever seeing a health-care professional in person.

But it’s not just abortion that is cause for concern. Democrats have transformed HHS into a wholesale promoter of leftist ideology. The logic of intersectionality demands precisely this. The Left views all of its causes as deeply interconnected. So, for example, did you know that HHS has an “Office of Climate Change Equity”? And that John Balbus, who heads that office, is working to “hardwire the climate office’s work into the agency,” as Politico puts it?

When Trump said that he would let Kennedy “go wild” on health, he nonetheless cautioned that Kennedy would not touch “our liquid gold” — that is, oil and natural gas. This is an excellent instinct on Trump’s part, and one of the few recent public acknowledgements by anyone, really, that Kennedy is an environmental extremist who wants to use state power to force us toward a green future and punish those who stand in the way. There are people like this in HHS right now.

There are worrying signs that Kennedy is still susceptible to intersectional logic along these lines. Early in the Covid-19 pandemic, he praised the lockdowns not just for halting the spread of the virus, but for reducing “lethal air pollution and the associated mortality risks we usually take for granted.” Perhaps he no longer thinks like this. But does he have the spine to uproot, in personnel and policy, the HHS Office of Climate Change Equity, and whatever other nodes of leftism that have festered within the department? To beat full-spectrum leftism, you need a full-spectrum conservative. His McDonald’s transgression aside, Kennedy could still be useful in other ways in the public-health apparatus — but not atop HHS.