Why not? Zeus would clearly rather be out doing the stuff he’s good at, like campaigning or playing golf or cooking up increasingly complex metaphors involving cars and Slurpees to explain the American political landscape. As Will Smith once said, “Barack Obama as a person is a fantastic individual, but Barack Obama as an idea marks an evolutionary flash point for humanity.” Let him go be an “idea” while someone else deals with the bricks-and-mortar stuff.
It’s not like that’s what we elect presidents to do, right?
The country’s chief executive officer needs a chief operating officer to run the day-to-day government, to cut through budget battles, political fiefdoms, parochialism and inertia to assist the president in keeping this country moving. Let the president’s chief of staff manage the White House – an enormous responsibility in itself. We need a chief operating officer to manage everything else…
Several recent examples of government action and inaction underscore the need for a COO. Few would dispute that the Federal Emergency Management Agency failed to perform during the Hurricane Katrina tragedy and that the Minerals Management Service fell far short of its mission leading up to the Deepwater Horizon crisis this year. The COO would be responsible for ensuring that such situations do not happen again…
The choice of the first COO will be critical for the future of the office, much as the selection of the first president shaped that office for our nation. Fortunately, an ideal candidate comes to mind: New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg. He is a man of well-documented business savvy who has also exhibited an ability to apply private-sector know-how to a diverse government enterprise. He has experience with public budgets and managing private-sector payrolls. His political status as an independent makes him uniquely nonpartisan in an age of vicious factions.
President Obama has the authority to create the position of COO within the executive branch, but he should consult with Republican and Democratic congressional leaders and ask their support for legislation to create a statutory position that would remain after he left office, much like that of the chairman of the Federal Reserve or the secretary of the Treasury.
The fact that Kerrey and his co-authors are suggesting procedural means for Obama to create this position makes me think that they’re really, truly serious about this inane idea and not just floating it as a conceptual critique of the size and inefficiency of government. In fact, what this really is — whether they know it or not — is a “Bloomberg for president” piece filtered through Kerrey’s loyalty to his party. He doesn’t want to endorse a third-party run by Bloomy against The One, so instead we get this tortured power-sharing proposal premised on the belief that Obama is simply not up to the tasks of his job the way Bloomberg would be. Frankly, I think it’s more patronizing/insulting to Obama to float something like this than to endorse another candidate outright. As for their choice of COO, between Bloomy’s tedious lecturing on the Ground Zero mosque and his status as official NYC cigarette/trans fat policeman, I’m decidedly cool to the idea. Would The One go for it, though? I’m thinking no: According to Rupert Murdoch, Bloomberg once said to him of Obama, “I never met in my life such an arrogant man.” What could go wrong?
Exit question: Here’s a radical idea for making the president’s job as a manager easier. Why not shrink the federal government?
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