Comments on: What’s That With Czars Anyway?

By: baahh

baahh — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 21:12:11 +0000

its being used to get the public used to the terms, and then as time goes on, slowly start changing our democracy into a socialism right under our feet and disguising it as “change”.

By: velda

velda — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:04:27 +0000

@Steve Krome

Saw that right after I’d posted. I noticed it says most presidents have eschewed the term. And at the bottom it says that the Obama team doesn’t like ‘czar’ either and links to another blog that states “apparently the transition folks don’t like that word” but they don’t cite anything. Also that was written on the 29th; has Obama embraced the term since then or is it still mainly being thrown around by newsies?

By: Steve Krome

Steve Krome — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 04:31:31 +0000

velda, Here's a Slate article that takes a overview of the term and it's transformation. Czar Wars: How did a term for Russian royalty work its way into American government? By Ben Zimmer

By: velda

velda — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 03:29:06 +0000

I’m wondering when the term came about an exactly why it was chosen and why it stuck…

By: Steve Krome

Steve Krome — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 23:16:20 +0000

Yeah, what’s with this pesky, troublesome Obama character anyhow? Calling political appointees “Csars” who ever heard of such foolishness?

Everyone knows calling Ed Meese… Reagan’s “Morality Czar”; AND John P. Walters… Reagan’s “Drug Czar” AND William Simon… Nixon’s “Energy Czar” AND William Bennett… Bush Sr’s “Energy Czar” was an altogether different situation. They were all good Republicans so it couldn’t be the same.

By: Jay_C

Jay_C — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:24:31 +0000

Yeah, I tend to agree with you there MVDG

By: Michael van der Galien

Michael van der Galien — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:15:00 +0000

You use it once or you use it for every single position; it tells us something about your approach to governance – and also about your approach to specific issues.

By: Jay_C

Jay_C — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:05:04 +0000

maybe this isn’t so bad after all… found this (reference to “Drug Czar”, this particular used has been around since the 80s) although it really doesn’t ring much of a bell with me. Though the use of the word Czar has been around for a while in US poilitics I have to say that it is being used quite a bit by the Obama folks..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_czar

By: Crimson Politics

Crimson Politics — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:43:41 +0000

He likes Russia… Perhaps at some point he thought “I need to recruit some Premiers to lead my administration— wait a second, premier might bring about more ‘communism criticism’, I better just call them ‘czars’ .”

By: Jay_C

Jay_C — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:43:22 +0000

Glad you brought this up, at first, the Obama administration’s use of the term “Czar” to me, was kind of a “cutesy” name for a new apointee for a new position, but as time war on, and the term came up more, I started to feel like you, uneasy about the use of the term, made me call into question why this word specifically was being used. It gives me the same impression as you indicated, that he will be all about big government and will take a govern “we decide what’s best” approach to governing. Perhaps the Obama administration should address this, as most likely we are not the only 2 that feel this way.