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As a White House physician under three presidents, Ronny L. Jackson often went to extra lengths to win over the officials he was on hand to assist. He helped George W. Bush clear brush at his Texas ranch. He supplied Barack Obama with Nicorette gum even as he urged him to quit the nicotine substitute. He once was so eager to deliver a sling to Vice President Richard B. Cheney for a sore arm that his sprint toward the presidential helicopter caught the attention of Secret Service agents, a friend said. That kind of enthusiasm drew ridicule in January, when Jackson said at a news conference that President Trump “might live to be 200 years old” if he had a more healthful diet. But his performance received lavish praise from the president, who shocked Washington a few months later by tapping the former combat surgeon to run the Department of Veterans Affairs — one of the federal government’s largest and most fraught bureaucracies. (Gardner and Crites, 4/19)