Before Inauguration Day, transition director John Podesta said in an interview that Obama deliberately was building a strong, centralized White House organization, one that grew naturally out of his disciplined presidential campaign.
For example, Podesta said, a coherent White House energy policy "needs input not just from the Energy Department," but also from the EPA and the Interior, Commerce and Agriculture departments. Thus, an energy czar made sense.
Podesta saw little potential for the czars to undermine the authority of Cabinet agencies. "As long as the White House staff is respectful of the power and authority of the people in the Cabinet, as I know they will be, I think it will be a very workable model," he said in January.
Now that the White House is launching the system, aides are refining the description a bit. Messina emphasized that the czar positions rank below Cabinet positions.
He said the confirmation-free appointments do not violate the Constitution because the czars are aides to the president and his team. "They're super-staffers and report to the president and to Rahm," he said, referring to Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. "I meet with them. I don't meet with Cabinet secretaries; they're above me." Czars mainly will do their coordination work behind the scenes, and secretaries will serve more as what Messina calls the "public faces" of the administration.
That description does not allay Byrd's concerns, said his spokesman, Jesse Jacobs.
"If the czars are working behind the scenes and the secretaries will be the mouthpieces of the administration, it calls into question who is actually making the policy decision," he said. "Whoever is making the policy decisions needs to be accountable and available to Congress and the American public."
It's still very early in the Obama presidency, but others also question the czar setup.
Browner, whose title is special advisor to Obama on climate change and energy, told reporters two weeks ago that the administration soon would propose new rules to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from a variety of industries. Obama's EPA administrator had hinted at such a possibility, but had not made it clear how things would unfold.
Browner's statement set off a nervous response among a few Washington interest groups that objected to the executive branch unilaterally taking the lead on regulating a substance as ubiquitous as carbon.
