An early Obama administration-era term for an official appointed in an area of specialty. Critics deride “czars” as unelected bureaucrats given vast powers without accountability. Backers of President Barack Obama argue such czars are experts who know how to make the machinery of government work efficiently.
Obama administration czars have overseen everything from the 2008-09 auto industry bailouts to climate change to intellectual property and copyright. The latest is Ron Klain, a Democratic insider tasked with coordinating the federal government’s response to the Ebola virus threat.
The New York Times wrote of him, “A seasoned crisis-response operative and veteran of Democratic administrations and campaigns, Mr. Klain, 53, is charged with managing the federal efforts to monitor and contain the deadly virus that has touched off a wave of anxiety in the United States and raised questions about the competence of Mr. Obama’s administration.”
Not surprisingly the appointment of Klain as Ebola czar drew criticism from Republicans, reported The Times. “Ebola is a health crisis, yet the president has appointed as his new Ebola ‘czar’ a partisan loyalist whose expertise is politics — not health,” said Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama. “One would think, faced with the prospect of an epidemic, the president would task an expert in epidemiology, not an expert in political spin.”
It’s easier to see why presidential administration czars are easy political targets. The term conjures up images of Imperial Russia, an authoritarian figure not in the least democratic (small d.)
Still, the term czar often makes it into news headlines because it’s short and kind of fun to say. At least more so than Klain’s official title, the clunky and bureaucratic-ese Ebola Response Coordinator.
And czar has at times had a positive connotation, at least in sports. Consider former NBA Coach Mike Fratello, now on-air analyst for Brooklyn Nets broadcasts on the YES Network and for nationally-televised pro bastketball games on TNT. During a previous stint as a color commentator, legendary sportscaster Marv Albert dubbed Fratello "The Czar of the Telestrator" for his masterful way of diagramming basketball plays on screen.