No car czar so who’ll be the face in accountability fall

3 comments February 16th, 2009

There won’t be a car czar to oversee government loans to the dreadfully challenged car makers, according to new Obama plan outlined in this cbsnews.com story.

As the teams move forward, Obama “wants to make sure that we’re getting the expertise and input of agencies across the government,” an official said.

I really want to believe that appointing senior administrative officials instead of one czar will help.

But the glass-half-empty in me wonders if it’s a bad omen: That in a U.S. auto industry collapse that puts the economy in an irreversible skid that it’ll be easier to spread the oversight blame among a bunch of people, a system, than to point at just one czar-like person. And when that happens, there seems to be a big cloud of amorphous unaccountability. The accountability seems to evaporate.

Seems when I can point a finger at somebody, I can understand something better. And I have a picture of what went wrong if I can attach a face to it. Sure, I could attach Obama’s face to it, but now, he’s like teflon.