Word: czar
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...little chance of the Senate acting on the bill before the end of the year. That leaves Obama - and global climate negotiations - at the mercy of U.S. lawmakers. "We want a comprehensive package, and we're doing everything we can to make that happen," said Obama's climate-change czar Carol Browner. But right now the ball is in Congress's court...
There was a joke floating around Republican circles earlier this year that was decently funny, by Washington standards, and had the added virtue of being true: Barack Obama has more czars than the Romanovs ever did. The quip, tweeted by Senator John McCain, was a thinly veiled gripe about the President's appointment of a slew of policy coordinators tasked with everything from reforming health care to restoring the Great Lakes. The White House advisers drew wide attention earlier this month when green-jobs czar Van Jones was forced to resign after revelations of impolitic comments about Republicans...
...when does a high-level White House adviser become a czar? No one knows for sure, since the term itself has no formal definition. Essentially it's a media creation - the White House rarely even acknowledges the title - used as a snappy shorthand to identify and describe the array of policy officials swarming the West Wing. And it's hard to blame reporters; unwieldy official titles are often begging for a rebranding (Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, for example, doesn't stand a chance against drug czar). Counts of Obama's czars range from the high...
...while Obama's cadre of newly crowned czars has earned condemnation from the right, when it comes to recruiting presidential advisers he's in good company. During World War I, Woodrow Wilson appointed financier Bernard Baruch to head the War Industries Board - a position dubbed industry czar (this just one year after the final Russian czar, Nicholas II, was overthrown in the Russian Revolution). Franklin Roosevelt had his own bevy of czars during World War II, overseeing such aspects of the war effort as shipping and synthetic-rubber production. The term was then essentially retired until the presidency of Richard...
...czar post has always had opponents, and criticism has swelled along with attention to Obama's appointments. Foremost among them are members of Congress who believe the advisers circumvent the legislative branch's proper supervision of the executive (unlike Cabinet secretaries, czars are not subject to confirmation votes). Earlier this month, six Republican lawmakers wrote a letter to Obama complaining that 18 White House positions "may be undermining the constitutional oversight responsibilities of Congress." Democratic Senator Robert Byrd, a well-known defender of Senate prerogatives, complained about the positions in a letter earlier this year. A spokesman replied that Obama...