Nominate and Wait

By PAUL C. LIGHT
NYT

ROBERT C. BYRD, the Democratic senator from West Virginia, chastised the Obama administration last month for using White House policy czars to undermine the president’s own cabinet. “At the worst,” he wrote to President Obama, “White House staff have taken direction and control of programmatic areas that are the statutory responsibility of Senate-confirmed officials.”

Mr. Byrd is right to question the proliferation of policy czars — after all, President Obama inherited a half-dozen czar positions from previous administrations and has already added more of his own, including czars for health, urban affairs and “green jobs.” But czars are rarely the fearsome giants of interference that concern Mr. Byrd. Most have more stalemates than successes, hardly ever receive the presidential attention they were promised and often quit in frustration.

But Mr. Byrd should also ask how the Senate has contributed to the czar-itis. The Senate has done virtually nothing, for example, to address the glacial pace of confirmations that often leads presidents to expand the White House staff as well as the number of appointees who serve without Senate approval. Although he has submitted the names of nominees to the Senate relatively quickly, President Obama will be lucky if the last of his nearly 500 full-time cabinet and subcabinet officers are confirmed by March 2010.

(More here.)