Land of the Czars

News item: Nancy Pelosi favors appointing Paul Volcker as a "car czar" to oversee the restructuring of the failing Detroit-based automakers. Man this is getting old. If the position is created it will join the ranks of other government "czars" including:

• The drug czar

• The copyright czar

• The health IT czar

• The cybersecurity czar

Why Paul Volcker? Why does running the Federal Reserve make one qualified to restructure an entire industry? And what do we have to show for all of these czars? Have we won the war on drugs? Why are we borrowing a title made famous by medieval Russia anyhow? Their government isn't so great today, was it really that much better back then?

I suspect that people are seduced by the idea that the appointment of one really smart guy can fix everything.