By In The Loop Al Kamen
Wednesday, February 18, 2009; A11

The Obama administration, though a tad slow on nominations this month, is moving with some dispatch to fill the post of Food and Drug Administration chief. After all, the FDA has a huge part of the action when it comes to ensuring that the food we eat and the drugs we take are safe. And we've just tallied nine deaths and hundreds more sickened from bad peanut butter.

Word is that President Obama's team has winnowed a fairly large field down to two finalists. One is Joshua Sharfstein, former health policy adviser to Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) and current Baltimore health commissioner, who's focused on things like safe medicines for kids. The other is Margaret Hamburg, who served as assistant secretary of health and human services for policy and evaluation in the Clinton administration and before that was New York City health commissioner.

Each candidate has some heavy-hitting champions. Sharfstein's list includes Waxman and Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), while Hamburg's includes Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).