Lamar, Lamar, the (Sometimes) Anti-czar

This week GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander got into a spat with the White House over appointments known in DC-speak as "czars."

A czar is essentially a high-level adviser, some of whom are confirmed by the Senate but most of them not, chosen to coordinate broad efforts across departments, regions or issues. There's Car Czar Ron Bloom, who heads up the GM debacle (I'm pretty sure car czar was also a Transformer of some kind, or perhaps KITT's mortal enemy in Knight Rider), Afghan Czar Richard Holbrooke, Drug Czar Gil Kirlikowske and many others.

Alexander joined five other Senators in sending a letter to President Obama stating their concern that these appointees wield powers without senate confirmation and therefore subvert the checks and balances apportioned by framers of the constitution (the kind of subversion, say, claiming to be outside the executive branch and thus not subject to laws protecting executive documents would constitute).
Alexander thought these points worthy of a Senate speech, and on Monday voiced his displeasure with the Obama administration's number of czars, which he and other Republicans calculate to be in the low thirties. 

The White House fired back at Alexander and others on its blog and in its daily press briefing, reminding Republicans that the use of czars began under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and have been supported specifically by Alexander and other Republicans in the past.

Alexander then released a statement Thursday that read,

"Yesterday, the White House blog and a White House press secretary objected to what I said on Monday, pointing out that I had supported manufacturing czars and AIDS czars six years ago," Alexander said. "Of course I did; I acknowledged that in my remarks on Monday.  As I said Monday, there have always been some czars in the White House and in the government since Franklin D. Roosevelt was president . . . but there's never been anything like what we've seen with this administration," (emphasis theirs).

He also visited the cast of Fox and Friends Thursday to reiterate he's not against czars, per se, just the number of czars Obama uses. In stark contrast to Joe Wilson, Alexander was more than polite when referring to the president. Must be that East TN upbringing. 

But most of this back in forth is short-term political posturing. What one person deems to be a czar is another person's adviser, and it's going to be hard to convince many who don't already dislike him that Obama has taken this so far as to constitute something corrosive to the Republic (signing statements, anyone?). 

While there are legitimate reasons to oppose ceding congressional oversight on appointments, the GOP doesn't have a leg to stand on when it comes to claiming the importance of fighting executive overreach. If Alexander is really concerned about this issue, he should convince his Democrat friends like Russ Feingold to continue raising the issue on his behalf.