Some foreboding news from Washington D.C.:

He started work as the White House’s ‘Ebola Czar’ in October.
But now, Ron Klain is stepping down from the position to return to the private sector, it is reported.
The 53-year-old, a former chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden, will apparently leave his role in the Obama administration by March 1 following a widely-criticized and very short tenure.
Instead, he will return to his former job as President of Case Holdings and general counsel for former AOL chief Steve Case’s venture firm, Revolution LLC, according to Fortune magazine.

This, of course, is exactly what they want you think. But one can’t help but notice the eery parallels to Russian history, nor avoid worrying that any Czar who takes ostensible steps to diminish his own power ultimately has other plans.

After the 1905 Revolution made the status quo untenable, Czar Nicholas II made all the right noises about reform, eventually agreeing to a “Manifesto” that promised, inter alia, to turn the country into constitutional monarchy that boasted an elected parliament and a series of guaranteed individual rights. And yet, just the following year, Nicholas reneged on the deal, half-heartedly agreeing to the (weak) Constitution of 1906 and, quietly, vowing that he would ignore its strictures. Buoyed by the impression that he had been cut down in size, Nicholas would stay in power for 12 more years, dismissing parliament when it suited him, changing the election laws by edict, and, often effectively ruling as an autocrat. Will we come to speak the word ”Ron Klain” in hushed tones only?