Friday, October 17, 2014

What Does an Ebola Czar Do?

Now that we have an Ebola Czar, I find myself wondering, what does an Ebola Czar do?

Set up a nice office, put a flag behind his desk and some portraits of great leaders on the wall? Call a press conference and say the public should stay calm because the government has the problem in hand? Be filmed getting briefed by doctors from the CDC?

I could do that job. I wonder what it pays?

3 comments:

Thomas said...

I general, what we call czars have no actual power, but are meant to be coordinators between disparate departments on various projects, and to give a central advisor for the president to go to address policy.

So the drug czar facilitates communication between the various parts of the government involved in drug policy, and to be a reliable aggregator of information to the president.

So an Ebola Czar would be facilitating communication between, say, the CDC, NIH, TSA.

Right now, various national security advisors have been at the center of the White House response, and they have other things to do.

leif said...

I'll suggest that this czar is also a fall guy: hired to absorb punishment that would otherwise be meted out to higher-ups should things go sideways.

John said...

Hey, I could do that, too. Serve for six months at, say, $20,000 a month, then resign in disgrace. Perfect!