Who Is The Czar of the Czars?

With all the talk about “czars” in the White House, it has me wondering if we should have a Commander-In-Chief and Chief Executive Czar.  This special advisor, which would not need to be confirmed by Congress, could coordinate the various parts of the Department of Defense, as well as other areas of the Executive Branch.  He or she could report directly to the President, on an “as needed” basis when running the Executive branch.

This would make them the President on an operational basis, without being elected, or in any way answerable to the Congress.  After all, the position is not a Constitutional office.

The benefits to this would be that the President would be free to give speeches to the joint Houses of Congress, to school children, and staged “town-hall” events even more frequently.  In fact, we could just think of the President as being the press secretary to the Presidential Czar.

In this way, the best campaigner, speaker, and press relations folks could publicly be “President”, while the best and brightest individuals are appointed “Czar”.  The people would not know who the Czar is, necessarily.  He could run things as a puppet master for all we would know.

The Czar would not be required to answer questions on the application for other White House employees.  This would make information about them hard or impossible to get.  No formal job description would be written either, since they will be running things in their own way, without constitutional checks and balances.

In fact, why limit the Czar to just the Executive Branch?  They could also run monetary policy (like the private Federal Reserve), appropriate money to whatever purpose they deem fit, take us to war, or do anything else that needs done by the government.

When one considers that we now have 30-35 czars in the White House, with cabinet heads reporting to them, it is no wonder that the President  did not hold a cabinet meeting in the first 90 days he was in office.  I am wondering if we have a Czar over the czars….a Czar Czar!

Maybe President Obama himself, is already reporting to a Czar Czar?

On the other hand, we could follow the Constitution.  When George Washington took office, there was no precedent for how to appoint Presidential advisors.  He filled his cabinet with the advice and consent of Congress.

More recently, Presidents have appointed cabinet level officials for FEMA, the EPA, Education, Energy, and other subjects of concern.  These have been appointed with the advice and consent of Congress.

Presidents of both parties have had special advisors in the past (czars) for various reasons.  With cabinet level officials reporting to “czars”, it is time to end this practice.  The czars should either be appointed to the cabinet, or otherwise made subject to Congressional confirmation.

Our founding fathers were wise to put checks and balances in the Constitution.  We should all beware of any increase in the concentration of power under one person or office.