Parallel piece to our discussions here:

war stories: Military analysis.
General Knowledge
Why no one wants to be Bush's war czar.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Thursday, April 12, 2007, at 6:13 PM ET

...The fact that Bush has found no takers suggests one of three possibilities: The generals don't have any great ideas; they don't believe they'd really be given carte blanche; or, most likely, to some degree, both.

There's a history of American policy czars—grey eminences solemnly appointed by presidents to untangle the day's knottiest problems (drug czar, energy czar, inflation czar, etc.)—and each chapter has been a tale of frustration and woe.

The reasons for failure have been the same in each instance.

First, the sources of the problem are beyond any one person's grasp.

Second, the president names a czar because the normal government agencies have failed or don't know what to do.

Third, czars may be given a mandate to knock heads together, but they're not given the power to set policy. If the president doesn't have a sound policy, the most efficient coordinator can't solve anything important.

Fourth, an outsider, no matter how smart and respected, probably doesn't have a better grasp of the problem than the responsible government agencies do—or if he does, he doesn't really control the levers to force those agencies to follow his directives.

Fifth, everyone (except maybe the appointed czar) understands all this from the outset—understands that the whole enterprise is a PR stunt to make the president look like he's trying to do something and to absolve him from blame after it's clear that even the wise outsider couldn't work miracles.