Obama’s Czars and the Bolsheviks at Fox News
Image by BL1961 via Flickr
Number of Czars in the George W. Bush Administration: 35.
Number of Czars in the Obama Administration: 32.
Number of stories on Fox News from 2000 – 2008 with the word “Czar”: ~27,000
Number of stories on Fox News from 2008 – Present with the word “Czar”: ~42,800
Number of stories on GlennBeck.com from 2000-2008 with the word “Czar”: ~29
Number of stories on GlennBeck.com from 2008-Present with the word “Czar”: ~137
As lopsided as those numbers are they’re actually appreciably more lopsided than that. Google’s ability to filter on the publication date of a result leaves something to be desired and, in many cases, the pre-2009 results are mis-identified results from 2009. If we add “-Obama” to the search criteria in a somewhat ham-handed attempt to filter out discussion of the Obama administration we end up with just 141 results from Fox News and just 6 “Czar” results from Bush-Era Glenn Beck.
That’s an impressive ratio: 42,800 to 141. For every “Czar” story during the eight years under President Bush, Fox has published more than 300 during the eight months under President Obama. Where, one might ask, was all this worry and concern about shadow governments and conspiracy when Bush was in office? Where was the outrage? Where was the paranoid fear?
Admittedly, “Czar” sounds like the sort of thing the US government ought not have. The term itself “Czar” came into metaphorical use in the American lexicon just a few years after the Bolshevik revolution in Russia and remains today as a rather idiotic word that the media uses to describe a policy position. Typically it refers to someone with a specific policy position within the White House; cabinet level secretaries and other confirmed positions are generally not referred to as “Czars.” For example, the so-called “Weatherization Czar” is actually the “Program Manager, Office of Weatherization and Intergovernmental Program, U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE).” With a title like that “Weatherization Czar,” silly as it sounds, must be a welcome reprieve.
Courtesy of Wikipedia and for the record, US Presidents have had what we would now call “Czars” in the White House since the days of Roosevelt and it is Bush, not Obama, who holds the record for the most “Czars” in an administration.
| President’s name | In office | Number of “czar” jobs |
Number of appointees |
Number of new positions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Franklin Roosevelt | 1933-1945 | 12 | 19 | |
| Harry Truman | 1945-1953 | 6 | 6 | |
| Dwight Eisenhower | 1953-1961 | 1 | 1 | |
| Lyndon Johnson | 1963-1969 | 3 | 3 | |
| Richard Nixon | 1969-1974 | 3 | 5 | |
| Gerald Ford | 1974-1977 | 1 | 1 | |
| Jimmy Carter | 1977-1981 | 2 | 3 | |
| Ronald Reagan | 1981-1989 | 1 | 1 | |
| George H. W. Bush | 1989-1993 | 2 | 3 | |
| Bill Clinton | 1993-2001 | 7 | 11 | |
| George W. Bush | 2001-2009 | 35 | 46 | |
| Barack Obama | 2009 | 32 | 35 |
Today policy Czars serve a useful purpose within any White House, providing a means by which the Administration can leap-frog the sometimes intransigent bureaucracy and offering a way to communicate to the general public that action is being taken at the highest levels on issues of national importance. Contrary to the fear-mongering of Fox’s Chicken Littles, Czars are regular government employees and their actions and the actions of their offices – like all government offices – are open to public scrutiny through freedom of information requests.
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This is how search engines can also be research engines, Chris. Nice work.
Congratulations, Chris. You seem to be an exception to the rule that you can’t trust people with two first names.
They’re actually three last names. I have my Great-Aunt’s last name as my first name, my Grandfather’s last name as my middle name, and of course my father’s last name as my last.
In response to another comment. See in context »I clicked your Wikipedia link and your table is different than theirs.. so either you edited it or the Wiki was updated.
They only have Bush as having 30 jobs not 35. Any right now the current reports are saying Obama has closer to 40 czar jobs. I have no way to know if its true but just shows the inaccuracy of Wikipedia, which is unfortunate. I’m an Obama supporter but I don’t see much transparency.
I’m wondering why very few major news outlets are reporting or researching Bush’s czar numbers..
Unfortunately even if they show that he had more all it does is make Obama and Bush that much more similar, and that things haven’t changed much… not to imply they are very similar to begin with..
In response to another comment. See in context »Looks like there’s been some vandalism on Wikipedia’s “Czars” page. The Wiki folks are checking it out and I suppose we’ll see what conclusion they come up with in the end.
Right now I’m showing the site listing Obama has having one more “Czar” position but fewer actual appointments than Bush 43.
We’ll see.
In response to another comment. See in context »Three first names? That may make you my antichrist.
In response to another comment. See in context »Who started calling them Czars in the first place?
As with anything else it’s not always a case of quantity but quality. People like Van Jones, a self proclaimed radical and communist, and Cass Sunstein, who believe animals should have the right to sue, should not have the ear of the President. Judge Obama by the people with whom he associates himself.
How about a comparison of the what the actual positions were under the different President’s and what if any real authority they had? A comparison of staff sizes for the positions and budgets would also be interesting.
The fact that some President’s had more or less is really quite meaningless. The fact that this President is trying to expand the government at an alarming rate, including his Czars. Did other President’s have someone over the auto industry? Fire CEO’s? Interfer with corporate compensation?
I’m glad that you have mentioned this in your article, even though it misses (or ignores) Beck’s point: these “czars” are far-left ideologues with less than honorable intentions for this country. If you want to put meat in your article, and really prove Beck wrong, why not counter, point-by-point who these czars are that Beck has a problem with, and why they should be accepted in this country. What your article is trying to do is, “Well, Beck didn’t have a problem with the Bush Administration with HIS czars!” Amateurish. Beck had a problem with Bush (II) as well, though for different reasons (over-spending, going to war without a plan, etc.). As a reader, I want to know what Beck is saying, why Beck is wrong (and not, “Well, he did it, too!”) and why these czars are important. That’s all I’m saying. BE the journalist you think you are, and expand my mind with substantive insight.