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Obama's Embassies for Sale
As the Senate confirms more big-league Democratic donors to be U.S. ambassadors—including sending Donald Beyer, who raised over $500,000 for Obama’s campaign, to Switzerland—former diplomat Dennis Jett, ambassador to Mozambique and Peru under President Clinton, says the president is just like his crony-appointing predecessors.
It is a system that Rod Blagojevich would love. While it amounts to little more than the selling of government jobs, it is also perfectly legal. Not only is it not against the law, it is a time-honored tradition. Yet continuing this sordid practice cannot help but have a negative impact on national security. The positions being sold are not those of minor functionaries; they are ones that really matter in an ever more globalized and dangerous world.
Despite the obvious damage, this corrupt exercise is repeated every four years—and there seems to be no hope that it is going to change under President Obama. The “system,” of course, is the awarding of plum ambassadorial postings to major campaign donors—cash for cachet.
In his first six months, Obama forwarded to the Senate 58 nominations for ambassadors. Of those 32, or 55 percent of the total, were political appointees.
The granting of the ambassador title to fat cats with no foreign-policy credentials has been part of how Washington does business for many years. George W. Bush gave nearly 50 “Rangers” and “Pioneers” ambassadorial posts. “Pioneers” gathered at least $100,000 in contributions and “Rangers” delivered $200,000 or more in 2000 or 2004. Having their own designation meant their status as a major fundraiser could be conveyed by using a single word. Influence peddling and patronage is so much easier when it has its own shorthand.
While Bush made little pretense of using government for anything other than the enrichment of the already rich and well-connected, Obama was elected to bring about profound changes in foreign and domestic policy. Even during the campaign, however, he made clear that there are limits to how ready Washington is for reform when it comes to ambassadorships. He readily admitted that there would be political appointees as ambassadors and he added “it would be disingenuous of me to suggest that there are not going to be some.”
The number of political appointees to date must be a disappointment to anyone who thought “some” would mean fewer than under previous presidents. In his first six months in office, Obama is ahead of four of his five immediate predecessors in the percentage of ambassadorial nominations that have gone to political appointees.
Since at least as far back as the Eisenhower administration, the percentage of ambassadors who were political appointees has remained at roughly 30 percent. The remaining 70 percent are almost always career foreign-service officers who worked their way up through the ranks of the State Department.
The first ambassadorial appointments of any new president include a far higher percentage of political appointees than the average over his entire term in office, however. The standard practice is for all ambassadors to present their resignations to a new president, but only those of the previous president’s political appointees are accepted immediately while the career ambassadors are usually allowed to finish out their normal three-year tours.
In his first six months, Obama forwarded to the Senate 58 nominations for ambassadors. Of those 32, or 55 percent of the total, were political appointees. In the same time period, his five predecessors made more nominations—an average of 67—but the number of those who were political was lower at 47 percent.
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This is common practice. Ambassadors must spend some of their own financial resources to fulfill the duties and requirements of the job.
Emabssies are a waste of money. With modern communications there really is no point in having expensive heavily reinforced compunds scattered around the world staffed by people that by and large have little contact with the locals due to security concerns.
JoshAus: I think you seriously undervalue embassies and the work that they do. They allow a local listening post, as well as provide services to Americans living abroad. And a large reason to keep them is the visa screening interview they perform, both for non-immigrant and immigrant visas.
sheww
this column by jett shows
the "change president" is the one changed...
Wow, Obama is doing exactly what he said he'd do when he was asked about this in a press conference at the beginning of his term.
While I agree it's a shame that the positions are going to donors rather than perhaps rewarding some other merit -- anyone able to host a dinner party and speak the language (unlike Bush's French Ambassador) is amply qualified for these positions.
Yeah so...your point?
It is a ridiculous extrapolation to conclude that because diplomatic position under Obama are going to cronies at the same rate as under prior presidents that Obama is similarly tainted. So foar, he has yet to shred the constitution, the bill of rights and habeus corpus like his predecessor. You will also note that these are not exactly critical diplomatic postings. I am pretty sure the Swiss do not have nuclear ambitions. An ugly tradition, yes, but a bipartisan tradition that the RNC and DNC rely on for the coffers. This does not rise to the level of taint, unlike Jim Demint's breath.
Typical outraged defense generated by any criticism of The One. Hilarious!
come on guys - I am an Obama supporter, however trying this cash for power trade-off (which clearly has been going on for a long time) is clearly another form of the bribery and cronyism that we point fingers at in the third world. Whether it went on before Obama is irrelevant - he chose to continue this 'tradition'
The only people surprised by this are those who drank the Obama
Kool-aid. Nobody with a brain thought this cynical Chicago politician would be any different.
And your point is???
While a longtime former foreign service office who had to deal with the particularly odious political appointees of the Reagan Administration - like the one who nearly peed on himself when exchanging his own signed photograph with the signed photograph of Mr. Mugabe since he didn't do policy just traded pics like some Craiglist pervert - it is hard to be sympathetic with a bureaucracy that with veyr few exceptions allowed the United States to go to war under false pretenses and in contravention of international law and of our national interests. Yeah, I am expecting a lot but foreign services really don't deliver much - ah that career Ambassador who always stood up in his office when he took a call from the two bit dictator in African country. Made me proud
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