The Obama Presidency

A Preliminary Assessment

Robert P. Watson, Jack Covarrubias, Tom Lansford, Douglas M. Brattebo, Robert P. Watson, Jack Covarrubias, Tom Lansford, Douglas M. Brattebo

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781438443300
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Gobierno estadounidense

Barack Obama's presidency is a pivotal one in American history, coming at a time of dramatic political change in the United States and amidst an astonishing array of domestic and foreign policy challenges. Not surprisingly, then, the Obama administration has been the focus of intense scrutiny by scholars, the press, and the public, and rarely has the tone of political discourse been more polarized and emotionally charged. In this book a distinguished group of scholars offers an objective and timely examination of the Obama administration; Obama's character, leadership style, and rhetoric; and his domestic, foreign, and national security policies. Engaging, lively, and highly readable, each essay offers important insight into this historic president and presidency.

VI

The Obama Administration

Chapter 20

The Policy Czar Debate

Justin S. Vaughn
José D. Villalobos

Obama's Controversial Embrace of Policy Czars

As has become the tradition during the first days of a new legislative session, dozens of bills and resolutions were filed in January 2011 as the newly installed Speaker of the House, John Boehner, and his fellow Republicans ushered in the start of the 112th Congress. The legislation filed ran the gamut from proposed initiatives to repeal the comprehensive health care reform passed in the previous session to attempts to permanently repeal the estate tax. Among the 126 bills offered on January 5, 2011 was an effort to restrain presidential personnel policy in one particular—and recently controversial—way.

Submitted by Congressman Steve Scalise (R-LA), the Sunset All Czars Act, known otherwise as House Resolution 59, aimed to provide a legal and formal definition for the job of presidential advisors known as “czars.” Resolution 59 sought to ban funding for salaries and administrative expenses associated with such advisors. Terse and straightforward, the actual language of the legislation devoted little attention to the controversial roots of the governing problem it aimed to correct. Indeed, to read the two-page document would give no indication to an otherwise unaware reader of the debates surrounding or rationale for the use of czars. Yet, the issue first came to the attention of the media and public in the early days of the Obama administration, and latter led to congressional hearings, breathless condemnation on conservative talk radio, and the resignation of at least one presidential appointee (see O'Brien 2011).

Controversy in the Administration's Early Days

Even before Obama's 2008 election victory, articles referencing the potential influence of would-be czars in the administration to come were published in outlets like the influential Website Politico (Lovely 2008). A month before Obama's inauguration, the Wall Street Journal also wrote about the ascendancy of czars in the administration-in-waiting (Meckler 2008). Within the Beltway, lawmakers and interest groups soon expressed concern that Obama might be “subverting the authority of Congress and concentrating too much power in the presidency” (Goler 2009; Hamburger and Parsons 2009).

Amid the turmoil, the White House began mounting defensive communication maneuvers, with Press Secretary Robert Gibbs even forced to defend the official title of pay czar (a.k.a. “Special Master for Compensation”) with the media and the appointment of Kenneth Feinberg to that post. Communications Director Anita Dunn, following Gibbs' lead, also defended other White House personnel hired as czars, while White House Counsel Gregory Craig responded to multiple congressional inquiries, including those from fellow Democrats, but avoided invitations to appear before committee hearings into the czars. This was quite a lot of controversy for an institution that, by all accounts, has no set definition and is not a unique or even recent development.

What Exactly Are Czars?

The central challenge posed when attempting to analyze presidential use of policy czars is that of definition. Currently, a single universally accepted formal definition of the position does not exist (Pfiffner 2009). In recent years, as the use of czar-like personnel has become politically controversial, the imprecision of the term has grown; indeed, part of the task of the aforementioned Sunset All Czars Act initiative was to provide a formal and legal definition for the term. Generally, the term has been applied to presidential assistants given authority over a specific and important policy portfolio. They are paid and appointed by the president but they do not have broad administrative abilities, lack the ability to forward or implement policy, and their appointments do not require Senate confirmation—which is a good part of the controversy. Beyond this relatively amorphous definition, however, there is no clear consensus on what precisely constitutes a czar, be it from the perspective of the presidents who appoint them, the media who cover them, or the scholars who study them. For example, scholars have attempted to identify conditions such as lack of Senate confirmation or certain administrative hierarchical arrangements, only to have their efforts at clarity compromised by an actual president who refers to an advisor as a “czar” despite the lack of fit with scholarly dictates (e.g., see Pfiffner 2009; Schwemle et al. 2010; Villalobos and Vaughn 2010b).

To further complicate the definitional task, as Anita Dunn, Obama's former White House director of communications has pointed out, “Just to be clear, the job title ‘czar’ doesn't exist in the Obama administration,” nor did it exist in any of the administrations that preceded Obama's (2009). Nevertheless, presidents and president-watchers alike have frequently used the term to describe positions occupied by individuals who have the president's trust as well as his ear, and thus the ability to affect significant change on the important policy task to which they have been assigned. As Patterson (2000: 264) notes, “[the czar] will be publicized as the super-person who will ‘knock heads,’ ‘cut red tape,’ ‘ensure coordinated effort.’ ” Or, as conservative commentator Pat Buchanan has argued, “Czars are specialists, your go-to guy for this or that assignment. Naming a czar is a president's way of saying, ‘This is so crucial an issue. I am assigning one of my best people to it, and he will report directly to me’ ” (Patten 2009: 58). It both views, the czars would seem to be indispensable to presidents dealing with complicated issues and wanted to have a single, trusted aide assigned to and responsible for the problem.

Given the gap between the relatively coherent idea behind the employment of czars and the ability to linguistically contain the concept within a neat definitional box, it helps to apply a basic categorization scheme that relies on practical distinctions for appraising czars in accordance with the origin and function of each appointment, while also considering usage of the term by certain parties. As such, an appointment may originate from the president himself (e.g., as an executive order) or may be appointed through Senate confirmation, with that latter considered less controversial.¹ For those appointments originating from the president, their function is most often geared toward an advisory role lacking direct control over policy. By comparison, Senate confirmed appointments are more likely to function with full legal authority over the policymaking process and have a more easily identifiable (i.e., traditional) position within the executive hierarchy. Table 20.1 provides a list of all Obama's czars, as well as information about their czar moniker, formal title and other relevant data.

In cases where appointees defy such expectations, scholarly debate often ensues over the appropriateness of their actions. From a legalistic perspective, some czars are simply glorified Cabinet members (often referred to as “PAS” personnel) in positions created by legislative statute. These personnel fall squarely within the constitutional construct set forth in Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution and thus have full legal authority to make policy decisions. To date, 12 of President Obama's “czar” appointees have been confirmed by the Senate (see Table 20.2, page 329; Dunn 2009). Such positions with Senate confirmation are created by statute and have full legal authority to make policy decisions with the president's consent.

Others may be categorized as inferior officers or lower level employees of the White House, which are easier to appoint but more controversial due to the uncertainty and doubt they often generate concerning the extent to which they can influence or even communicate policy on the president's behalf (Pfiffner 2009; Schwemle et al. 2010). Higher-level officers report to a Senate confirmed officer “who Congress has given the power to prescribe duties for underlings” and “are housed within parts of the government that are subject to open records laws like the Freedom of Information Act” (Feingold 2009; see also Edmond v. United States 1997). Meanwhile, lower-level officers often are housed within the White House (and thus outside the purview of Congress) and answer directly to the president. Although lower-level czars can provide an immediate, upfront advantage in symbolically attending to an important issue, their limited capacity for being able to address policy problems in a substantive way can lead the public to develop false perceptions of their control over the policy process, thereby setting relatively high (or even unattainable) standards of expectation concerning performance outcomes.

Table 20.1. Barack Obama's Presidential Policy “Czars”

“Czar” Title/Label	Administration Title	Office Holder	Functional Categorization	Position Origin	New Position	Holdover Appointee	Tenure Length
“Afpak” Czar, Afghanistan and Pakistan Czar	Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan	Richard C. Holbrooke	Secretary of State Appointed (Non-confirmed)	State Department	Yes	No	01/22/2009 to 12/13/2010 (died)
AIDS Czar	Director, Office of National AIDS Policy; Member, Domestic Policy Council President	Jeffrey Crowley	Presidential (Non-confirmed)	President	No	No	02/26/2009 to present
Asian Carp Czar	Asian Carp Director; Chair of the Asian Carp Regional Coordinating Committee; Director, Office of Economic Opportunity	John Goss	Council on Environment Quality Appointed (Non-confirmed)	Council on Environment Quality	Yes	No	09/08/2010 to present
Auto Czar, Car Czar	Treasury Advisor, Head of the Auto Task Force	Steve Rattner	Secretary of Treasury Appointed (Non-confirmed)	Treasury Department	Yes	No	02/23/2009 to 07/13/2009
Auto Recovery Czar, Autoworker Czar	Member, Presidential Automotive Task Force; Director of the Recovery for Auto Communities and Workers	Ed Montgomery	Presidential (Non-confirmed)	President	Yes	No	03/30/2009 to present
Border Czar	Assistant Secretary for International Affairs, Special Representative for Border Affairs, Department of Homeland Security	Alan Bersin	Secretary of Homeland Security Appointed (Non-confirmed)	Department of Homeland Security	No	No	04/15/2009 to 03/27/2010
California Water Czar	Deputy Interior Secretary	David J. Hayes	Presidential Nomination, Senate Confirmed	Congress	No	No	05/22/2009 to present
Climate Czar	Special Envoy for Climate Change; President's Chief Climate Negotiator	Todd D. Stern	Secretary of State Appointed (Non-confirmed)	State Department	No	No	01/26/2009 to present
Climate Czar, Energy Czar, Global Warming Czar	Director, White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy; Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change	Carol Browner	Presidential (Non-confirmed)	President	No	No	01/22/2009 to present
Copyright Czar	Coordinator, Intellectual Property Enforcement	Victoria Espinel	Presidential Nomination, Senate Confirmed	Congress	Yes	No	09/25/2009 to present
Compensation Czar, Pay Czar, Gulf Claims Czar	Special Master for TARP Executive Compensation; Special Master for Pay Claims for the BP Oil Spill Fund	Kenneth Feinberg	Secretary of Treasury Appointed (Non-confirmed)	Treasury Department	No	No	06/10/2009 to present
Cyber Czar, Cyber Security Czar	Director, White House Office of Cybersecurity; Coordinator, Cybersecurity	Melissa Hathaway	Presidential (Non-confirmed)	President	No	No	2/09/2009 to 08/21/2009
Cyber Czar, Cyber Security Czar	White House Cybersecurity Coordinator	Howard Schmidt	Presidential (Non-confirmed)	President	N...