By Patricia H. Kushlis
If anyone thinks a two week how-to-be-an-Ambassador course at the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute is adequate preparation for becoming a US Ambassador, he (or she) must be smoking something far stronger than tobacco. But that – according to the august American Academy of Diplomacy (AAD) which counts all former Secretaries of State and various other American foreign policy luminaries as members – is what newly appointed ambassadors get. I could add whether they need it or not – but that seems unnecessarily gratuitous.
It’s no wonder then that I never worked for a political appointee ambassador who had a clue as to what the position or an Embassy was all about – let alone knew much about US foreign policy goals that he (there were no political appointee shes at my posts) was supposed to advocate. So I have to thank the AAD – and Nick Kralev of The Washington Times who highlighted the letter – for asking presidential candidates McCain and Obama to reduce the percentage of political appointee ambassadors from its current level of around 34% to no more than 10% of the total. If it were up to me, I’d reduce it to two-three percent maximum. That would leave the Court of St. James, Tokyo, Paris and a very few other Embassies to the uninitiated who really are on a first-name basis with the president and can and will call him up in the middle of the night - if need be.
Meanwhile, I find it ludicrous that the US taxpayer is willing – most likely out of ignorance - to fork over six figure annual salaries, gas guzzling cars, drivers, staffs, first class air fare, and free mansions and grounds for people who – as Kralev points out - may not even know where the country of his, or her future appointment is on the map. Once upon a time these appointments went to the very wealthiest who bought their Ambassadorships through personal contributions to a winning campaign. That changed in the aftermath of the campaign finance law which limited individual contributions and rewarded money bundlers instead. It did not improve the quality of political appointee Ambassadors.
To argue, as John Samples of the CATO institute does in Kralev’s article that having to rely on career Foreign Service Officers as Ambassadors would hold the president “hostage” to professional staff is just visceral anti-civilian government right-wing whistling-in-the-wind clap-trap. It also demonstrates how little Samples knows about the way Embassies really operate.
First, professional staff runs the Embassy. They do so because 1) there are months between the time an individual is nominated for an Ambassadorial position and actually arrives at post; and 2) most political Ambassadors haven’t a clue as to what being an Ambassador is all about anyway. Frankly, they never really run much more than their secretary and those individuals in the administrative office who tend to their personal needs.
Then it’s time for them to leave – wearing the honorific title on their lapel pins to the grave. As a consequence, the highest ranking professional staffer – the Deputy Chief of Mission – is tasked not only with ensuring that the Embassy functions smoothly, that US interests are represented as well and as appropriately as possible and that the Ambassador and his or her spouse (or other kin who may have come along for the spare bedroom) cause as little damage as possible while in the country – and ideally are turned into public relations assets - rather than liabilities.
How long do political appointee Ambassadors stay?
What the AAD letter does not include – and I wish it did – are the turnover rates of political versus career ambassadors and how much time political appointees actually spend in the country of assignment – as opposed to dashing home for several days or weeks at a time to tend to their own personal business interests all the while collecting their Ambassadorial salaries. As I reported in a recent post, the US Embassy in Helsinki has had five different Ambassadors (with months in between departures and arrivals) over the past seven and one-half years. Only one of them was a career officer. When I worked there between 1988 and 1992, the record wasn’t much different. I realize that the harsh Finnish climate is not to everyone’s taste – but musical chair ambassadorships can’t be good for anyone – and the people who accept them should at least know about the weather before they get there.
If I were writing the rules, one of my first would be that any newbie Ambassador – political appointee or career - signs on for three years and while on assignment only leaves the country twice a year for reasonably short periods – say a month each time maximum. If the person decides to resign before the three years is over, he or she loses the Ambassadorial title forever, repays the US government the salary and all those other perks expended that I mentioned above, and the position and title automatically revert to the long suffering Deputy Chief of Mission – who has kept the place together anyway.
I suppose that’s all wishful thinking but it seems to me that the American public deserves better than the costly, inefficient, ineffective and embarrassing system we’ve got right now. As Kralev quotes AAD’s Ronald Neumann as saying: “The American people wouldn’t use a toothpaste that has not been certified by the government or drive over a bridge that wasn’t built according to the highest standards. Why do people think that anyone can do foreign policy?” I would also ask – how would Americans feel about having the US Army led, not by the army's own generals but by civilians who had been political party state finance chairs, bought their exalted military ranks but never themselves even spent a day in the military service?
Of course, if we substantially reduced the number of political appointee ambassadors, the State Department might also be able to decrease the number of career staff at post assigned to take care of their every whim. Hmm, now wouldn’t that be a novel and a budget-cutting idea.
An earlier post on the topic: "A Primer for First Time Political Ambassadors," WhirledView, June 2005.