Are Obama's Czars Un-American?

The current controversy over the number of "czars" in the Obama administration enjoys the rare distinction of being a political fight in Washington that everybody wants to have.

Republicans, eager to paint President Obama as a power-mad totalitarian, have created czar lists (Obama has 30 or 34 czars, depending on whom you ask), written czar op-eds, held czar press conferences, and even gone Beck on the White House's fondness for appointed functionaries.

Democrats, in turn, have launched into full-frontal I-Know-You-Are-but-What-Am-I mode, reminding Republicans that just months ago, the Bush White House had more czars than a Moscow cemetery -- Homeland Security czar, anyone? Anyone?

Imagine our confusion, however, when Sen. Russ Feingold, a liberal's liberal from Wisconsin, sent President Obama a letter Wednesday sharing his concerns over the constitutionality of all of the president's men and women (like "climate czarina" Carol Browner, pictured) in high-level positions that did not require a high-level examination of their fitness for office.

To get to the bottom of the politics at the top, Politics Daily spoke with Stephen Hess, senior fellow emeritus at the Brookings Institution. Not only is Hess a veteran of the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations and a former adviser to Presidents Ford and Carter, he literally wrote the book on how to organize a presidential administration (it's called "Organizing the Presidency").

Hess said he is confounded by the "bizarre czar controversy," since presidents have always had close advisers with powerful portfolios who did not require Senate confirmation. If anything, he said, the irony in the current scuttlebutt is how powerless most of those with royal "czar" titles really are. Van Jones, for example, "wasn't a czar of anything," Hess said. "He didn't run anything. He didn't control anything. He was an adviser with a very small little piece of the action, reporting to a committee that in turn has no power."

Why call them czars then? "Maybe it makes the person in the office feel better about life."

Ultimately, Hess said, the solution to the furor over the Obama czars might be to bring the truly powerful ones before the Senate for an old-fashioned Congressional hearing, while consigning the "czar" moniker to the pages of ancient history, next to the Romanovs.

The full Q&A, edited slightly for length and clarity, follows:

Q: Are czars a real controversy or are they just people in inartfully named positions? Is it unchecked power?

A: If you deconstruct the so-called czars, you'll see that a lot of them are simply misnamed by whoever chooses to do the naming. The news media, they like czars. If the Obama White House has played that game at all, they have done themselves a disservice. Obviously those who disagree with the administration have grabbed onto this.

Q: So who are the czars?

A: If you look at these positions, and I've gone through them one by one [Hess uses the Washington Post's count of 30 current czars], you find that an awful lot of these jobs called "czars" are of a very low level of political input.

One for instance, Van Jones, the "green jobs czar," was generously a third-echelon political appointment. He wasn't a czar of anything, he didn't run anything. He didn't control anything. He was an adviser with a very small little piece of the action, reporting to a committee that in turn has no power. I was there when the committee was formed in 1969. To call him a czar was bizarre really. It's the bizarre czar controversy.

Q: Are there other bizarre czars?

A: There is an urban affairs czar, the White House director of urban affairs. That office was started in 1969 by Richard Nixon. The director, the person who has the same job as Adolfo Carrion, only with much more authority, was Daniel Patrick Moynihan. I was the deputy director. If you had told Daniel Patrick Moynihan he was a czar, he would have laughed in your face. It would be ludicrous. Who did he czar over?

And some of them are even more ridiculous than that. Calling the deputy secretary of the interior, David Hayes, a "California water czar," is ridiculous. He's the number-two person in the Interior Department and he has a lot more to do than worry about California's water.


Q: Are all the czars the same?

A: I counted 16 jobs created by Obama with no Senate confirmation, another five already in existence with no confirmation, and another group that gets Senate confirmation.

They are not very different than what presidents repeatedly have done. It's the job of the president to put together a staff to try to help him run the executive branch of government. But to talk about a "faith-based czar," an office that was created by George Bush and is now run by a 25- or 26-year old? It's just ridiculous. Maybe it makes the person in the office feel better about life.

One could almost wish in terms of the AIDS czar and the drug czar that they really were czars and really could do something. They've been at it for a very long time. They weren't started by this administration. The drug czar, that's been going on for administration after administration, but the czar doesn't stop the drug traffic.

Q: Why are senators objecting if czars aren't new?

A: The complaint, in part, of some of these senators (and they're very thoughtful senators -- it's not an attack on them) is that somehow they're not able to call these people before them.

Let them try. Every one of these people would be delighted to testify before a committee of the Congress. Can you imagine Richard Holbrooke turning down an opportunity to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee?

Q: Senators Byrd and Feingold raised constitutional issues over the czars.

A: There aren't any. The Congress has already created, in my judgment, too many jobs that need Senate confirmation. They can create, if they choose, a path for these to have Senate confirmation.

Article 2 of the Constitution, by the Founding Fathers' design, knocks up against Article 1 and Article 3. Some of that is going on in a very modest way, I must say. The letter from Feingold was very polite and very specific.

There are several of these jobs that are important in terms of the attempt to create some unified, overall policy, usually for the three or four public policy areas that the president ran on and otherwise declared important to him. That would be the energy and environment position that Carole Browner has; the climate change job that Todd Stern has; health care that Nancy Ann de Parle has.

But a lot of these jobs are very specific in nature. Kenneth Feinberg, the pay czar -- that's a small, important, specific function. What exactly bothers Senator Byrd about having somebody in the job?

Now what you have elsewhere is the overload with Glenn Beck. You have the politicizing of this for obvious reasons that has overheated this.

Q: Is a range of czars from non-important to important?

A: Yes. I think the foreign policy ones -- Holbrooke for Afghanistan, Mitchell in the Middle East. They're important. So if you wanted to call them "ambassadors" and have them confirmed, I think that would be fine.

The ones that are very important already have Senate confirmation, like the director of National Intelligence, so that's not an issue; it's already part of the law.

Q: Do you think somebody like Carole Browner, who once was a Cabinet secretary, should get Senate confirmation?

A: I'd have to know what she does. Is she more important than the secretary of energy? I wouldn't think so in this case. She doesn't run that department.

I think she tries to bring the forces together, but presidents have always had top aides like that. They push and shove and hope that everybody is marching to the same beat in the four years that a president's been given. So I'd be very cautious about that.

Q: Maybe the solution to the czar scandal is just to stop using the word "czar"?

A: Wouldn't that be nice?