Obama’s team ballooned to more than two dozen appointees, sparking accusations of government by czar
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“The idea is that the czar is someone who will keep people accountable,” said Sabet.
“He or she, ideally, is someone the president can use as a one-stop-shop, versus having to ask 10 different people about 10 different aspects of the issue.”
Sabet said that the drug czars he worked under would navigate with issues relating to border control, criminal justice, public health and federal-state relations, among other areas, on any given day.
While there is no hard-and-fast definition of a czar, it’s a favoured term inside the beltway for senior bureaucrats with broad powers over an area of policy. Czars can take on both temporary problems, like hurricane relief, and long-term ones, like climate change and cyber security.
The term resurfaced during the world wars to refer to the powerful executives tapped to manage different aspects of the wartime economy, such as rubber, oil and manpower.
The media’s use of the term took off in the early 1970s, when then-President Richard Nixon chose psychiatrist Jerome Jaffe to lead Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention, calling Jaffe his “drug czar.”
The following decades saw all manner of media-annointed czars, including an AIDS czar, birth control czar and reading czar. These officials have held varying degrees of actual power, ranging from mere figureheads to genuine policy heavyweights.
“Word ‘czars’ at Lake Superior State University ‘unfriended’ 15 words and phrases,” read the accompanying press release.
Sabet added that not all czars are created equal. He noted that more powerful ones, like the director of National Drug Control Policy, tend to have stronger spending powers.
He also said the most media-savvy czars tend to be the most effective ones.
“Public relations and the bully pulpit are key in these sorts of roles,” said Sabet. “You need to be all over the media if you want to avoid getting lost in the shuffle.”
One czar who certainly isn’t media shy is Trump border czar Tom Homan, who was a fixture on cable news before even stepping into the role.
“It’s all for the good of this nation and we’re going to keep going,” said Homan.
“No apologies.”
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