We get a history lesson on the FDA as well.   From an op-ed in The Hill: 

This might sound like today’s debate over the choice of the new director of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection—but it is a more accurate reflection of the drama that played out a century ago, in 1906, when the first director of what became the Food and Drug Administration was selected by President Teddy Roosevelt.

Landmark legislation can finally protect the public from hidden dangers which might happen to any of us any day. For the first time we have the real prospect that products will be safer and that we will know more about the dangers in store. But this can happen only if the new Agency has an independent and assertive start under an experienced leader with loyalties that run toward the public interest, and not toward special interests who have from the start tried to kill the new authority. The new director will, for better or worse, personify the strength of this new effort. There can hardly be any doubt about who the head of the new agency should be. The question is who will it actually be?