OK who's this? Tall, lanky, unusual surname beginning with O, wields massive power from the White House.
That's right, it's Peter Orszag.
Orszag is the Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. As titles go it's not the snappiest or the sexiest but it means the person who oversees how federal money is spent, and ensures that as much of it as possible is being spent on what the president wants it spent on. Orszag is the accountability guru; the number-cruncher-in-chief; the bang-for-buck dude. Under circumstances in which a record-breaking amount of federal money is about to be disbursed in record-smashing time, this makes him a Very Important Person. Indeed, after POTUS and Rahm Emanuel (who calls him 'Orz') it's hard to argue there's anyone more powerful in the White House.
Like other members of the administration's economic team, Orszag is terrifyingly bright and accomplished (though, of course, as we've learnt in the past and may well learn again, this is no guarantee that he won't make mistakes). Just 40 years old, he's already a political veteran. He served in the Clinton White House, and before his current job he was director of the Congressional Budget Office, giving him an intimate familiarity with the flows of government money. Not one to seek the limelight, he will take, if not centre-stage, then a key supporting role this week when Obama unveils his budget, which includes an ambitious plan to reduce the deficit by half in the next four years.
Orszag is not just a money man; during his time at the CBO he took particular interest in health care policy, and understands that byzantine subject from the inside out. He's a passionate advocate of the urgent need to drive health care costs down. Now that Daschle has gone and the search for a replacement continues, Orszag's role in shaping policy in this area - the president's top domestic priority after stabilising the economy - is pivotal.
An excellent profile of Orz can be found here, from which, this:
He has black hair, clear glasses, and pointed ears that lend his face an elfish quality. He's a country music enthusiast, and he has a sly sense of humor: He once quoted an Oliver Wendell Holmes poem in the footnotes to a CBO analysis of infrastructure spending, because David Brooks complained that budget analysis lacked sufficient "romance."
(Photo: AP)
Really? Emanuel calls him "Orz"? I wonder if he's aware that "orz" is internet slang or emoticon (especially in Asia) for "I got really screwed over" or "something terrible just happened to me."
If you look at "orz," the "o" is a man's head, and the "rz" is the body on its hands and knees. The capitalized equivalent is "OTZ."
Posted by: Kyle G | February 22, 2009 at 06:21 PM
That is really interesting, Kyle G. I was thinking to myself that 'Orz' doesn't seem particularly inventive or original for the name Orzag; it's so dull that it's not even newsworthy. But maybe Emanuel is playing on the fact the Orzag must be the bearer of bad news all the time, overseeing the budget during an economic crisis and therefore making everyone feel 'orz'.
Now Dubya, he could lay on nicknames, like Stretch for Strobe Talbott. Govern and lead, the man couldn't manage, but creative nicknames, he mastered.
Posted by: Lyle | February 23, 2009 at 05:24 AM
A picture that seems more fitting for the World's "Number Cruncher/Math Wiz/Nerd-A-Tron 2000™"-in-chief here:
http://malthe.tumblr.com/post/71814351/peter-r-orszag-office-of-management-and-budget
(... taken from http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/magazine/2009-inauguration-gallery/index.html?hp that features remarkably direct and honest portraits of "The Obama People" pre-inauguration.)
Posted by: Malthe Sigurdsson | February 23, 2009 at 12:49 PM