Obama Appoints a New Czar
Today Barack Obama appointed a ‘czar’ to oversee the Ebola ‘crisis’ in the USA. His name is Ron Klain who is in fact a long time Democrat operative who has previously worked with Al Gore (remember him?) and Joe Biden. Ron Fournier from the National Journal makes 14 comments about Obama’s foray into czarist politics. My favourites are:
1. We shouldn’t need an Ebola czar.
2. We already put somebody in charge of corralling federal bureaucracies and coordinating local responses to national emergencies. His name is Barack Obama.
3. He has a chief of staff, the nation’s chief operating officer, Denis McDonough; a homeland security adviser, Lisa Monaco; a national security adviser, Susan Rice; a director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and a Cabinet full of secretaries.
Fournier is right about not needing an Ebola czar but Obama is a big government guy as are many others in Washington DC.
11. The choice makes sense if Obama’s main concern is a) the incompetence of his team, or; b) midterm politics. My strong hunch is it’s “b”. The Obama White House is not self-aware. It is nakedly political. The uneven response to Ebola threatens to be a toxic issue for Democrats, and the president is under pressure from his party’s desperate candidates to do something.
Charles Krauthammer on Fox News earlier today stated that White House reason for choosing Klain was ‘messaging’. That also strongly implies that the choice is political. Also how much is Klain’s salary going to be to do ‘messaging’?
12. Klain will report to Rice and Monaco. That makes no sense. Even if you think a czar is needed, and believe that the czar should be a Democratic operative steeped in White House politics, this reporting structure is a mistake. He should report directly to Obama.
13. Klain can’t be a disruptively productive force without autonomy. I have to ask: How many senior White House officials, including the president, have ever created an organization chart? Anybody with a rudimentary understanding of management would know that you don’t untangle a chain of command by injecting a new figure haphazardly into it. The answer is to put somebody atop it. Which brings me back to my first sentence, and the real problem here.
None of this is really all that surprising and is typical of the Obama White House. This is all just good old big US government progressive politics at work. Create more bureaucracy and make it look like you’re actually taking positive action.
14. We shouldn’t need an Ebola czar. The president needs to do his job better.
Cannot disagree with this either. Unfortunately Obama comes across as somewhat indecisive when big decisions have to be made. That is one the biggest problems he has.