Obama demotes “drug czar”, despite prior Biden criticism

posted at 12:19 pm on March 11, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
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Jake Tapper notes that Barack Obama has apparently decided to “mess with Joe” on the access that the so-called “drug czar” has in the administration.  Obama has demoted the job to a sub-Cabinet level, breaking with the previous administration’s policy of making it a Cabinet-level appointment.  Tapper also notes that the last President to do this got criticized for it — by Joe Biden:

When Vice President Biden later today formally announces the nomination of Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske as the new Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, he will also be in a way formally downgrading the office from Cabinet-level status to non-Cabinet level status.

Interestingly, Biden himself criticized a similar move by then-President George HW Bush in 1989. …

Biden, then the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, criticized the elder Bush’s position, telling the Washington Post in 1989 that it would lower the profile of the drug war.

“The priority of drugs in the executive branch will actually decrease,” Biden said at the time.

I guess we can say that the priority of drugs in the executive branch will actually decrease now too — right, Joe?  Or does the sauce change for the gander?

The choice of drug czar has apparently come under some heat for his family’s experiences in drug problems, although for the life of me I don’t understand why:

President Obama will name Gil Kerlikowske as the nation’s drug czar today, ending a long search that slowed as details of drug arrests involving Kerlikowske’s stepson came to light earlier this year. …

Kerlikowske, who is currently the chief of police in Seattle, Washington, has long been speculated to be the frontrunner to serve as the drug czar. But, revelations concerning the arrests of his stepson, Jeffrey, on drug-related charges complicated the process and led some to draw unfavorable comparisons to the film “Traffic” in which the daughter of the man entrusted with overseeing the nation’s drug policy spirals into dependency.

In remarks today accepting the nomination, Kerlikowske will reference his own family struggles with the specter of drug abuse. “Our nation’s drug problem is one of human suffering,” Kerlikowske is expected to say, according to prepared remarks. “As a police officer, but also in my own family, I have experienced first-hand the devastating effects that drugs can have on our youth, our families and our communities.”

As irony goes, this is pretty weak.  Most families have had to confront drug use, directly or indirectly, when children become teenagers.  Traffic’s storyline has the character surrender to a sense of futility after his daughter’s extreme experiences in addiction, but for most it would motivate them to fight the problem.  One can debate whether drug czars are effective and whether we should fight a “war on drugs” at all and to what extent, but the drug problems of Kerlikoske’s son should hardly prove a disqualification for this job.  Perhaps Kerlikowske has other problems (as a number of Obama appointees have had), but that’s a non-issue to me.

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