Steve Evans, BBC World Service, "Billion Dollar Election" (MP3)
If you have a few minutes, it's worth hearing a selection of Bush political appointees justify their selection as ambassadors to Great Britain, Denmark, Mauritius, Spain... no "Tashkent or Kinshasa," as presenter Steve Evans says. A shorter but slightly different version is available on BBC's World Business Daily (MP3).
Career diplomats might want to pour themselves a drink and remain seated (though not driving, please) while these gentlemen (to a man, though some Pioneer and Ranger women have purchased the ambassadorial title-for-life) pontificate on how the "Foreign Service culture" makes professional diplomats unfit for diplomacy. Or "selling America," as some of them put it.
Evans remains skeptical: "isn't this too naked - money for position?" Or, "couldn't career people do this just as well?" The political guys think not: "We need more outside people... DCMs [Deputy Chiefs of Mission or Counselors, the senior Foreign Service person at American embassies, usually career people] are not equipped to manage," says one. Whereas the political appointees certainly can do that: Evans interviews a car dealership owner from California (US Ambassador in London); a hockey franchiser from North Carolina (practicing "Elvis Diplomacy" in Copenhagen); and some guy from Las Vegas. Another former Bush I man, Richard Capen, accuses Foreign Service people of "coasting, like the Spanish employees at the Embassy." Good thing he's no longer in Madrid, but happily running Carnival Cruise Lines back in Florida.
You'll be happy to know - especially if you're Danish - that "America has their back, and Denmark will not be overrun by angry Muslims" over the cartoons of The Prophet, according to Ambassador Jim P. Cain ("selling ice hockey in the South," now "selling America"). John Price, who "when asked to go to Mauritius, did his duty," doesn't make a link between the Million dollars (he said it) he gave to Bush and his nomination to the Indian Ocean paradise. The Utah developer said that "in 90 days, you can become a diplomat." How come the professionals have to spend a lifetime at it? Maybe we're just dumb.
Diplomat's diplomat Thomas Pickering, who served as a career US ambassador to more countries than most people can count, told the BBC's Evans that while the political types might be good salespeople, it takes more than that to represent the United States. Pickering, diplomatically skirting the integrity (no quid pro quo for campaign contributions, using ambassadorial contacts back home in their own businesses) question, nevertheless calls for "no more than 10% of US ambassadors" to come from outside the ranks of professionals (car dealer Ambassador Robert Tuttle in London thinks that if the President wanted 50/50, that's his prerogative). No answer yet from either the McCain or Obama campaigns, but the Center for Public Integrity (CPI, which publishes "The Buying of the Presidency: Checkbook Diplomacy") says that they have, respectively, 500 and 350 "bundlers" ready for payback after Inauguration Day 2009.
Listen to the BBC, but control that blood pressure.