{"id":1087,"date":"2008-12-11T09:40:45","date_gmt":"2008-12-11T13:40:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=1087"},"modified":"2008-12-11T09:40:45","modified_gmt":"2008-12-11T13:40:45","slug":"take-me-for-a-ride-in-your-car-tsar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=1087","title":{"rendered":"Take me for a ride in your car, Tsar"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a tangential matter (well, tangential to The Non Sequitur), Steve Benen at Political Animal asks a question I've long wondered about.  He writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

TNR reports<\/a> on Obama's energy and environmental team: <\/p>\n

\n

"In addition to Carol Browner<\/a> as the energy czar (but not czar, because apparently the transition folks don't like that word), Obama reportedly has selected<\/a> the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's director Steve Chu<\/a> to be energy secretary; New Jersey's Lisa Jackson as head of the EPA; and Los Angeles deputy mayor Nancy Sutley as chair of the Council on Environmental Quality. All are low-profile picks, and diverse ones."<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I don't yet know enough about these people to say much, though from what I can tell, they sound like very strong picks. (More on the whole team here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>; on Chu here<\/a> and here<\/a>; on Browner here<\/a>; and on Jackson here<\/a>.) But I was absolutely thrilled by one fact in this post: the claim that Obama and his team do not plan to use the word 'czar'. <\/p>\n

Thank heavens. We've had drug czars, energy czars; we may yet get a car czar. I'm tired of czars. And why czars, anyways? They didn't do all that well in Russia, as far as I can tell. If we have to go against our democratic traditions, why not an Imperator, or a Pharoah, or a Basileus, or a Mikado? For that matter, why not an Energy Yang di-Pertuan Agong<\/a>, or an Oba<\/a>Tlatoani<\/a>?<\/strong> of Energy, or an Energy <\/p>\n

Personally, I think we should just embrace the silliness of all these titles and designate Carol Browner our new Grand Energy Poobah<\/strong>. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Now I know I'm not alone in wondering whether Czar was meant to impart special powers to the Czar in question–special powers of despotism and failure.   <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a tangential matter (well, tangential to The Non Sequitur), Steve Benen at Political Animal asks a question I've long wondered about.  He writes: TNR reports on Obama's energy and environmental team: "In addition to Carol Browner as the energy czar (but not czar, because apparently the transition folks don't like that word), Obama reportedly … Continue reading Take me for a ride in your car, Tsar<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}