Obama's Clown Car
This commentary follows my recent article in POLITICO Magazine: "Why Does America Send So Many Stupid, Unqualified Hacks Overseas?"
During the 2012 presidential campaign, as the Republicans rolled out one moron after another as their party's potential standard bearer, the sobriquet, "Republican clown car," caught on in the media. Now it's President Barack Obama's turn, though of a different twist altogether: ambassadorial nominees whose low caliber a) portends potential embarrassment, if not damage, to the United States and b) exposes a system of blatant corruption whose time should have long passed. The latest nominees are now well known to the American public and the world: a Long Island hotel magnate who showed himself utterly clueless about Norway's form of government; a TV soap opera producer who was lost at sea when asked about U.S. strategic interests in Hungary; a political fundraiser destined for Bueno Aires who speaks no Spanish and miscast Argentina as a "mature democracy" and an American "ally"; and a campaign bundler who showered $1.6 million on the 2012 Obama campaign for the privilege of being named the U.S ambassador to Iceland, a nation of 320,000 - that's five bucks for every Icelander. These folks clearly don't know a demarche from their derriere.
This administration has a sorry track record for putting bonehead political hacks in embassies who then wreak havoc or simply don't do their job. Pres. Obama's noncareer ambassador to Kenya, Scott Gration, resigned after a little over a year in the job, having destroyed staff morale with his idiosyncratic management style which included conducting all of his official communications from his unclassified laptop set up in his office bathroom.The president's man in Malta, Douglas Kmiec, resigned after a year-and-a-half in the ambassadorial job after being faulted by the State Department's Inspector General for devoting almost all of his time to his own issues of religious faith and ignoring Washington's instructions. Nicole Avant, one of the president's fundraising friends, was essentially AWOL during her two-year, hands-off stint in the Bahamas, resigning after the IG called her to account for "an extended period of dysfunctional leadership and mismanagement." Pres. Obama's envoy to Belgium, Howard Gutman, a top money bundler, was alleged to have solicited prostitutes, some of whom were underage, in a public park. And, of course, there's the Marie Antoinette of the Ardennes, Cynthia Stroum, the Seattle campaign rainmaker who resigned abruptly after a year in Luxembourg upon being rebuked by the IG for her "aggressive, bullying, hostile and intimidating" management style that drove at least four embassy staff to request transfer to Afghanistan and Iraq, or to quit government altogether.
It's clear that most of those who purchase U.S. ambassadorships haven't a clue what the job of an ambassador is about. Being an ambassador is not about looking good at cocktail parties, or wallowing in the trappings of the office. It's not about gaining that lifelong title of "Ambassador" to impress pals at the country club. It's not about personal agendas.
It's about being on call 24/7 to respond to the needs of their government, American citizens, and their staffs. It's about navigating nimbly in foreign socieities, knowledge of whose languages comes in real handy. It's about diplomacy vis-a-vis Congress and assorted domestic interest groups as well as with foreign governments. It's about knowing how to get the best performance out of embassy staff members and rewarding them accordingly. It's about managing the activities of a myriad of U.S. government agencies so that all work in tandem to further the interests of the United States. And it's about providing Washington with expert insights and analyses about what's going on in other countries. Each ambassador is a key player in defending the national security interests of the United States on the front lines. And sometimes it's dangerous as we saw in Benghazi with the deaths of four Americans, including Amb. Chris Stevens. In short, diplomacy is not for amateurs.
The nation and the president would be well served by the following:
the nominees for ambassadorships to Norway, Hungary, Iceland and Argentina withdrawing their names.
failing that, the American Foreign Service Association sending a letter to the president and the Senate informing them that AFSA does not support the nominees due to their being unqualified.
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee returning the nominees with no action taken -- a not so subtle way of letting the president know they're unacceptable.
fully staffing the State Dept's Office of the Inspector General and restoring the Inspector’s Evaluation Reports, recently terminated without explanation. The IER's acted as de facto report cards on ambassadors and other senior officials.
The Senate has shirked its obligations to provide advice and consent on ambassadorial nominees. And there's a good reason for this. There's a gentleman's agreement that each party will rubber stamp the other's diplomatic nominees because both parties use awarding of ambassadorships as political spoils to campaign fundraisers and cronies. The United States is the only advanced democracy to do this. And in doing so, it shows Washington as hypocritical when lecturing other nations about political transparency and clean governance.The public outrage over checkbook ambassadors should send a message to our elected officials: it's time to end political patronage in diplomacy. Nothing less than the prestige and security of the United States are at stake. See also:The American Diplomatic Spoils System, Part V: Let's Just Sell Off the Whole Damn Shootin' Match -- and previous