Believe I'll dust my broom

It's out with the old -- in with the...beige...at the CDC.

ATLANTA — No federal health agency changed more during the Bush administration than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It got new buildings, new managers and an entirely new operating structure.

A year into the Obama administration, only the new buildings remain. Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the agency’s director since June, has quietly scrapped nearly all the administrative changes that the previous director, Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, spent much of her six-year tenure conceiving and carrying out.

Gone are the nonscientific managers whom Dr. Gerberding sprinkled throughout the agency’s top ranks. Gone is a layer of bureaucracy, agency officials said. Gone, too, are the captain’s chairs with cup holders from a conference room so fancy that agency managers dubbed it the Crown Room.

In their place, Dr. Frieden has restored not only much of the agency’s previous organizational structure and scientific managers, but also its drab furniture. And he has brought something new: a frenetic sense of urgency.

In defense of Dr. Gerberding, she was battling all those terrorist attacks that did not happen during Bush's terms, like planes flown into buildings and anthrax drifting around postal centers, so the captain's chairs were vital. Under such pressure, you need a cool one at hand.