Amateur Hour Diplomacy: Moneybag Campaign Donor to be U.S. Ambassador to Bankrupt Argentina
The following was written by retired Foreign Service officer Tex Harris:
A Rookie to Argentina: America's Default ?
PAYING OFF WITH AMBASSADORSHIPS: A KEY PART OF "DONOR MAINTENANCE" FOR POLITICAL PARTIES; THAT UNDERCUTS AMERICA’S DIPLOMACY
If political fund raising were a ring toss carnival sideshow, ambassadorships would be the huge stuffed teddy bear prizes lining the top shelf of the booth -- something to aspire towards for the big donors. And there are many smaller prizes on the shelves below – membership on a presidential commission or advisory committee, night in the Lincoln Bedroom, invitation to a state dinner or White House concert, etc., down to a fancy Christmas card from the President’s family.
Unlike the carny game, the rules of “donor maintenance” are hidden from public view, while many of the prizes on offer are paid for by the taxpayers, but only if the candidate the player is supporting wins. Career Foreign Service officer diplomats are not permitted by the Hatch Act to play this game.
In the selling of ambassadorships, even the amount paid to play is not public. The problem is that while all direct campaign contributions from an ambassadorial nominee and family members are capped by law at $2,600 each, and must be reported publicly to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee -- the much larger campaign amounts that are bundled through the nominee’s working the rolodexes of contacts are not reported publicly and may never be reported by the campaign which totals them up carefully like the win tickets at the carny booth.
So the true total cost of winning the big ambassadorship job is seldom known; but the benefits are. A three-year ambassadorial term at a G-20 embassy would be worth well over $500,000 a year in value to the donor being "maintained." This valuation includes salary of $181,500 yearly, multiple servants, a top chef & crew, a very fine house, car/driver, often a plane and a boat, representation funds, etc. Plus a lifetime title -- of which there are few in our republic—which gets one the best table in most restaurants in the nation, great cachet among one’s peers forever, and future contacts galore.
If the ambassadorship, which over the three year term is worth over $1.5 million and can be obtained for only $145,000 -- as the public record shows for ambassadorial nominee to Argentina, Noah Mamet -- then “paying to play” ambassador is one of the best investments in the country. America’s “dollar diplomats” are among our wisest investors at the public trough.
The only loser is the nation and its citizenry. While the Argentine ambassador to Washington was hand picked by that nation's Finance Minister for her command of American English, high-level political experience, understanding of international finance, the U.S. legal system and its politics, we are about to send someone to Buenos Aires with few qualifications. And we are doing this when Argentina has just defaulted on billions of dollars of bonds with major financial and legal interests at stake in a mega Argentine financial crisis. Instead of sending a fluent Spanish speaking professional to lead our Embassy, the White House political staff chose a top rated political bundler, who is a diplomatic rookie, with "conversational Spanish," innocent of international financial experience. The White House pays off a mega campaign bundler and the nation gets rookie leadership in a key post at a critical time.
So exactly how does this "donor maintenance" process work at turning political bundlers into likely diplomatic bunglers? First every bundler has a number, which is given to all donors persuaded to contribute to his/her candidate. When a donor, who is a contact of the bundler, sends in a check to the political campaign for the capped $2,600 amount or less, the donor includes the bundler's number on the campaign form, and this notated number and the amount is then credited to the bundler’s account in the campaign’s books. The bundler remains hidden -- unless the campaign agrees voluntarily to release its records -- because the only public record required is the listing of the individual donor candidate’s and immediate family’s contributions. No one knows the full cost of the top shelf prize – an ambassadorship.
Here is the public data on Noah Mamet, the White House’s current nominee to be ambassador to Argentina:
The non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics has previously reported that Mamet bundled $96,000 to the Obama campaign.
Direct contributions from Mamet and his immediate relatives totaled $44,660, including $37,040 to the Obama campaign and the DNC, and $8,000 to 12 current Senators who can vote on his confirmation -- Donnelly, McCaskill, Brown, Heitkamp, Tester, Kaine, Landrieu, Gillibrand, Bennet, Coons, Reid, and Boxer.
Other reports based on a variety of hidden sources show that Mamet, who is a career professional Democratic Party fundraiser, raised over two million mostly from donors in the L.A. region.
Other details of Mamet's bundling prowess are available below.
One hopes that a key embassy in a G-20 capital, with one of the top ten U.S. ambassadorial residences in the world - The Bosch Palace - does not go for a mere $145,000 in contributions to a non-fluent Spanish speaker, who has never been to the country before and mistakenly told the SFRC that Argentina is an U.S. "ally" when its Foreign Minister led a customs team in forcibly entering a U.S. Air Force plane at the local airport last year and photographed its top secret communications code settings. Some ally.
Through the political parties “donor maintenance” programs, we continue to sell the jobs of representing our country’s interests for merely raising a million bucks or so, at a time when American influence needs to be represented by our best, and not our most politically generous.
A policy where the political parties get the benefits and the nation gets amateur “dollar diplomats” leading its key embassies around the world is a win/lose policy with serious implications for American diplomacy, which we are increasingly relying on to protect our key security and economic interests in the world.
In our top posts, American ambassadorial leadership is not competitive. We are fielding rookie minor leaguers in a World Series game. Compare our ambassadors to Russia's. Our “donor maintenance” policies are one cause of our decline. The political party wins; the nation loses.