Posted by Ilya Somin:
Obama Administration Now has More Czars than the Romanov Dynasty:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_04_12-2009_04_18.shtml#1240032658
Over some 300 years, Russia was ruled by a total of 18 czars of the
Romanov dynasty. However, as David Rothkopf of Foreign Policy points
out, the Obama administration has now appointed more czars than that
in just three months:
It has finally happened. With yesterday's naming of Border Czar
Alan Bersin, the Obama administration has by any reasonable
reckoning passed the Romanov Dynasty in the production of czars.
The Romanovs ruled Russia from 1613 with the ascension of Michael I
through the abdication of Czar Nicholas II in 1917. During that
time, they produced 18 czars. While it is harder to exactly count
the number of Obama administration czars, with yesterday's
appointment it seems fair to say it is now certainly in excess of
18.
In addition to Bersin, we have energy czar Carol Browner, urban
czar Adolfo Carrion, Jr., infotech czar Vivek Kundra, faith-based
czar Joshua DuBois, health reform czar Nancy-Ann DeParle, new TARP
czar Herb Allison, stimulus accountability czar Earl Devaney,
non-proliferation czar Gary Samore, terrorism czar John Brennan,
regulatory czar Cass Sunstein, drug czar Gil Kerlikowske, and
Guantanamo closure czar Daniel Fried. We also have a host of
special envoys that fall into the czar category including AfPak
special envoy Richard Holbrooke, Mideast peace envoy George
Mitchell, special advisor for the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia
Dennis Ross, Sudan special envoy J. Scott Gration and climate
special envoy Todd Stern. That's 18.
This is a very conservative estimate, however. I will allow you to
pick whom you would like out of the remaining candidates. For
example you could count de facto car czar Steve Rattner even though
the administration went out of its way to say they weren't going to
have a car czar... before he ultimately emerged as the car czar . .
.
But you certainly might want to count people deemed by the media to
be the "cyber security czar" or the "AIDs czar" or the "green jobs
czar" even if there are reasons to quibble about the designation of
one or two of them.
Government by czar didn't work especially well in Russia. Hopefully,
it won't be quite so bad in this country. And, yes, of course I
understand that Obama's czars, unlike the Romanovs, are ultimately
accountable to democratically elected officials. I also don't expect
Obama's czars to be organizing any pogroms or exiling dissidents to
Siberia anytime soon. On the other hand, democratic accountability for
America's czars is increasingly tenuous in light of the fact that
there are too many of them for most voters to even keep straight, much
less understand and evaluate their performance in any depth. Here, as
elsewhere, [1]the rapidly growing size and complexity of government
makes it nearly impossible for the electorate to acquire enough
information to effectively monitor those who are supposed to be
serving its interests. Maybe Obama's army of czars will do a good job
anyway. A few of the Romanovs did. But for every "Czar-Liberator,"
like[2] Alexander II (who free Russia's millions of serfs), there were
a lot more [3]oppressors and [4]incompetents.
References
1. http://volokh.com/posts/1233381066.shtml
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_II_of_Russia
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_I_of_Russia#Legacy
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_II
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