Spot-on comments!!

The prevailing theme of all-encompassing, personal control fits perfectly with Obama’s personal history and explains the outrageous numbers of formally acknowledged ‘tzars’ and the numerous instances where Cabinet level officers have been overridden after the fact by White House spokesmen on policy statements/proposals.

I think we have elected our first ‘dictator’ in terms of mindset. Literally every policy decision is now running through the White House. Why bother having a Cabinet? Obama has a tzar to do the job. To my memory, even FDR had a larger and more broadly distributed group of advisors and did not try to personally direct every level of the operation from the West Wing.