For the better part of six years, President Obama’s Republican critics have condemned the very idea using federal “czars” to address specific policy challenges. The criticisms have never really made any sense – the Bush/Cheney administration relied far more heavily on czars than Obama – but it’s nevertheless been one of the right’s more common condemnations of the White House.

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The irony is truly extraordinary. It was none other than Jack Kingston who was so disgusted with the very idea of the executive branch utilizing czars that he introduced federal legislation in 2009 to cut off funding for these officials altogether. The bill didn’t go anywhere in the Democratic-led chamber, but it picked up over 100 Republican co-sponsors.

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And yet, here we are. Faced with Ebola fears, the exact same far-right lawmaker who championed an anti-czar push is now calling for … a new czar.

I should add, of course, the nation’s Surgeon General could presumably play a valuable role in the U.S. response, but right now, there is no Surgeon General – the White House’s nominee believes gun violence is a public-health issue, so the National Rifle Association won’t let the Senate confirm him.


But the other angle is the trajectory of this amazing conversation. It wasn’t too long ago that congressional Republicans quite literally referenced Obama’s use of czars as grounds for presidential impeachment. Now we see GOP lawmakers demanding to know why the White House isn’t using a czar in response to Ebola.