Call Him the "Government Czar"

Fred Kaplan on the search for a "war czar":

Actually, there's another official who, as Baker and Ricks describe the job, has the "authority to issue directions to the Pentagon, the State Department, and other agencies." He's called the president of the United States.

Uh-huh. I would just say that czar foolishness aside, the idea that the key to Iraq is shuffling the US-side personnel is pretty absurd. It's astonishing the number of side-issues the human mind can devise to distract attention from the fundamental dynamics in Iraq, but everything we do there eventually winds up crashing into stubborn reality. There simply isn't some rejiggering of the configuration of our policies that can make unattainable or nonsensical policy goals suddenly realististic.

Comments

Hey, anything that moves authority away from that guy currently acting as "President of the United States" deserves serious consideration.

Posted by: Robert Earle on April 13, 2007 02:37 PM

Yet another pundit rips off my Sadly, No! comment. Plagiarising bastards the lot of you.

Posted by: Ginger Yellow on April 13, 2007 02:48 PM

"It's astonishing the number of side-issues the human mind can devise to distract from......."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yes, my wife and I have experienced that first hand. We recently appointed a laundry and lawn czar. Strangely neither set of tasks are getting done in a faster, cheaper and more efficient manner. I'll have to ask Hadley what we've done wrong.

Posted by: steve duncan on April 13, 2007 02:49 PM

I really hate it when "The Onion" is prophetic.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/41444

Posted by: Njorl on April 13, 2007 02:51 PM

I think it might work if they call it the War Potentate. Or at least spell it with a "t", tzar. Then maybe, just maybe, we'll turn the corner in Iraq.

Posted by: kj on April 13, 2007 03:46 PM

It's a classic manager's solution--any problem can be solved by managing better. It's not about expertise, wich managers don't have, or operations, which managers don't do, but organizational structure, or a rejiggering of the corporate machinery. People tend to look for solutions to problems in areas where they know something. Bush and his team know ... nothing, so they're scrambling to create more of these "management" solutions.

Posted by: Nathan on April 13, 2007 03:49 PM

Like John Oliver said last night on the Daily Show, "if the War Czar doesn't work out, maybe he can be replaced with a War Shah or War Pharaoh, or a Battle Poobah, or a Galactic-Space Fuehrer."

Posted by: Clark on April 13, 2007 03:53 PM

A Battle Poobah would be awesome! And can't the Dems, finally, start hammering home that Conservatives are for anything but small and efficient government. At least a few licks in is warranted before this blatant opening goes away.

Posted by: Fred on April 13, 2007 03:56 PM

It's the classic death spiral that a project goes into when the people running it don't know what they are doing. Normally at some point the powers that be (in a corporation, management, or if management is the problem, the market) relieve the clueless from their duties. However, since the voters in their wisdom didn't take the opportunity to can this leadership team in 2004, we're going to ride this disaster all the way down into the ground.

Posted by: jimBOB on April 13, 2007 04:04 PM

The office of "Commander in Chief" is mostly ceremonial; the Commander in Chief's primary functions are PR and intimidating people who try to cast doubt on the chief decision-maker, the "Unitary Executive".

The "Unitary Executive" consists of the "Vice President" and the "Deputy Chief of Staff".

Posted by: John Emerson on April 13, 2007 04:20 PM

This Administration has reached the point in the Enron Death Spiral where a businessman of George W. Bush's character and class awards himself a $50 million bonus, sells all his shares, appoints one of his lackeys to run the business, shreds the cooked books, and retires to a gated community in a country with mild winters and no extradition treaty with the US. Such a shame that it's so difficult to pull off this trick in the public sector.

So much for the CEO Presidency. It's cold comfort, but it's nice to know that deep in his little black heart, President Bush almost certainly regrets leaving his cozy spot in the Texas Oil and Baseball racket.

Posted by: LaFollette Progressive on April 13, 2007 04:30 PM

I swear if we just arrange these deck chairs with better feng shui we'll be fine.

Posted by: AJ on April 13, 2007 05:20 PM

The goal of both the surge and the appointing of a war czar is to postpone any judgement about Iraq until sometime after 20 January 2009. This way when the US finally pulls out of Iraq sometime after that date, Bush and his allies can appear on talk shows and tell everyone they had a plan in place to win the war but President Thompson or President Dodd somehow failed to follow their blueprint, and that rather than anything the Bush Admnistration did is why we lost the war. It's similar to Nixon claiming that he had a plan to save South Vietnam and if only he'd still been around in 1975 Saigon would have never fallen.

Posted by: Guscat on April 13, 2007 07:41 PM

Dana Priest had a discussion in her questions from readers time about this in the Post. Her speculation seems to be that the Czar is Cheney's idea - another of his paranoid attempts to control the softies (aka Condi Rice) at the State Department, and to counter Gates. Gates' own disparagement of the czar idea might be collaborating evidence for this theory.

My theory is that, of course, this is a transparent ruse for getting Paul Wolfowitz's girlfriend another post and another raise.

Posted by: roger on April 13, 2007 11:03 PM

Bush doesn't want a war czar, he wants to be czar. How many times do you think he tells Laura 'My friend Putin doesn't have these problems'. Yeah, if you kill journalists investigating you and don't allow elections in the states things get a bit easier. Bush has a lot in common with the Putin beyond that - he's still on good tears with the oligarchs and kleptocrats of the nation and while lacking an official state press, the existing mainstream press especially television remains in his corner. Oh for that pesky first amendment Bush and Rove could have stolen the entire country.

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