The Great Ambassadorial Con: What "Anastasia" Teaches Us About Bilking the People
You're both fools! You're examining her as if she was the real Anastasia. There is no Anastasia! She was shot to death ten years ago by a firing squad. We're not looking for her, gentlemen. We're seeking only a reasonable facsimile.
~ General Sergei Pavlovich Bounine (in the movie, Anastasia)
In the captivating 1956 movie, Anastasia, a cabal of conniving Russian émigrés, led by Gen. Bounine (played by Yul Brynner) seeks to bilk the late Russian tsar's estate out of £10 million by grooming an amnesiac waif, Anna (Ingrid Bergman), into posing as Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, reputedly the sole surviving Romanov. The performances are electric as Bounine/Brynner relentlessly puts Anna/Bergman through impostor royalty boot camp.
BOUNINE: I can make you Anastasia.
ANNA: Please, please. No one will believe it. The family. They will call it a lie.
BOUNINE: No matter what they think, they will accept you.
CHERNOV: For ten million pounds, gladly.
ANNA: They will accept me and pretend to love me for money? Is that what they are like?
BOUNINE: Isn’t everyone?
Since they bombed their confirmation hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee earlier this year, campaign bundlers-turned-ambassador-wannabes, George Tsunis, Noah Mamet and Colleen Bell reportedly have been undergoing similar training at the State Department's Foreign Service Institute (FSI). Mamet and Bell are scheduled for a full Senate confirmation vote on Dec. 1. Just as Bounine force-feeds Anna, fois-gras goose-style, the esoterica of the Russian imperial court, State Department Bounine-equivalents have been instructing the money bundlers in the esoterica of diplomacy with the desperate hope that by the time they come up for a Senate plenary vote, they will finally be able to know a démarche from their derrière.
To refresh the memories of readers, Mr. Tsunis made abundantly clear to SFRC members that he hadn't the foggiest idea what kind of government Norway had; Mamet described the anti-American Argentinian leadership as our allies; and Colleen Bell's stumbling stream of consciousness answers regarding U.S.-Hungarian relations were more convoluted than the plots of the TV soap operas she helps produce. And, oh, btw, none can carry on an intelligent conversation in any language other than their native English.
One can imagine how the FSI indoctrination has been going. Imagine a Yul Brynner-like career ambassador, say, Ambassador Bounine, struggling to get his charges at least able to parrot the right answers to senators' soft ball questions:
AMB. BOUNINE: Now, let's say the Red Army storms across the Norwegian border and begins to sack and pillage Oslo. As U.S. ambassador, Mr. Tsunis, would you a) send a note verbale to the Norwegian foreign ministry expressing our full moral support? b) invite the Russian ambassador over for cocktails to discuss the matter? or, c) send a Flash telegram to Washington reporting the facts and seeking guidance?TSUNIS: I would denounce Russia as a fringe element that spews hatred.AMB. BOUNINE: (staring back with dropped jaw) Uh, George, we've been at this for four months. Think hard. What have I been instructing you concerning the proper diplomatic response to such a crisis?TSUNIS: Right. Right. Um. I'd invite the emperor of Norway over for cocktails and hand him a Flash note verbale expressing our moral support and seeking his guidance.AMB. BOUNINE: (speechless) Let's move on, shall we? Noah. The Argentine economy has just collapsed and the government has announced it will no longer pay off its debts. As U.S. ambassador, what would you do?MAMET: As our close ally, I would inform them that that's okay with us. I would, of course, express this through an interpreter since I speak no intelligible Spanish.AMB. BOUNINE: Wha'? (pause) Ah, Colleen, Prime Minister Orban has shut down the remaining free media, abolished all political parties other than Fidesz and Jobbik, announced an alliance with Moscow and ordered all synagogues closed. How would you react as the American ambassador? BELL: (purses lips) I would go to him, uh, the leader of Hungary and I... I would, um... say, um -- (rapid fire speech) I know that my daughter can quite easily become infatuated with you, and just as easily end up as one of your discarded conquests. But Caroline is my only daughter, my only child and I desperately want for her happiness. And I would do everything in my power to see to it that she does not get hurt. AMB. BOUNINE: (incredulous) What the hell is that supposed to... Wait a minute. Is that dialogue from an episode of The Bold and the Beautiful? BELL: (red-faced with embarrassed grin - shrug).AMB. BOUNINE: (popping two Tums) Class dismissed!
Now, American taxpayers, here's what's going on. Listen carefully because your hard earned tax dollars are about to send a bevy of bumbling bundlers to represent your country overseas to the tune of millions of dollars each year in support costs as they play ambassador --
Just as Gen. Bounine and his cronies cynically schemed to put forth an impostor as a real Russian princess in order to cash in on a munificent royal gold hoard, your president, in cahoots with a malleable and corrupt Congress, is about to shoo in two, maybe three, impostors who forked over a grand sum of at least $3.7 million in campaign contributions. As I've written ad nauseam in my previous blog posts and published articles on this subject, a) this corruption is bipartisan and has been going on for decades; and b) there are real costs to America's national security in sending unqualified hacks to represent our country abroad.
Ask yourselves: just as we appoint real soldiers as generals to defend our nation, doesn't it make more sense to send real diplomats to represent the U.S.A. abroad as ambassadors rather than rich plutocrats who buy the positions and will at best be "reasonable facsimiles"?
I have no doubt that Misters Mamet and Tsunis, Ms. Bell and other political appointees are American patriots who wish to serve their president. That, however, makes them as qualified to be America's diplomats as I am to be a hotel baron, political agitprop or TV soap opera producer.
Write your senators. Tell them America's security in these precarious times calls for professionals manning our diplomacy. Tell them to end cash-for-ambassadorships.
As the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovona (Helen Hayes) said in Anastasia, "I will tell them that the play is over, go home!"