The Diplomatic Spoils System: Now It's Trump's Turn

I just got back from a commencement ceremony at a top liberal arts college. It was a terrific affair. And the college awarded four honorary doctorate degrees. I applauded three. When they announced the fourth, I sat stoically with my arms crossed and a grimace on my face. Why? Because the fourth recipient purchased his success. He was until recently U.S. ambassador to a major allied nation. He paid $3 million for that job in the form of donations to the previous president's campaign organization. He had no directly relevant experience to be a diplomat, nor does he speak the language of the country in which he represented the United States. I don't care how talented he may be in his chosen real career. He bought that ambassadorship. He didn't deserve it.

As followers of this blog know, I have this thing about the selling and bartering of public office. Somehow our majestic democracy has managed over the years to drive corruption out of government hiring in the military as well as civilian agencies - with one notable and glaring exception: the Department of State, particularly ambassadorial positions. Call it a fetish of mine. But there's something about a president being able to reward political donors and cronies with senior diplomatic jobs that just gets in my craw. All presidents engage in this form of legal corruption. President Obama was one of the worst, virtually turning the nation's foreign ministry into a patronage waste dump. (You can search this blog for my many posts and published articles on this. Anderson Cooper even asked me to discuss it on his show.) When Obama named the deputy producer of a TV soap opera to become ambassador to Hungary, I was beyond appalled. So, I submitted a job application with the producer (her husband) of The Bold and the Beautiful, noting my complete lack of acting training or any other relevant qualifications (My Job Application to the World's Most Popular Soap Opera). I didn't get the job. She, however, got hers.

And we taxpayers are subsidizing this political spoils system to the tune of many millions of dollars per year. We are the only industrialized nation to do this. It makes us a laughing stock and potentially damages our national security.

Which gets me to Callista Gingrich - you know, the nice highly cosmeticized lady with the perennial blonde carapace who's married to Newt "Contract on America" Gingrich. You see, Newt was angling hard for a top job in the pre-cataclysmic Trump administration. For some reason, he came away empty-handed. It's likely, believe it or not, that the Attila of the Georgia Plains over played his hand. He, along with the dark Lord of the Undead, Rudy Giuliani, lunged for the job of Secretary of State only to lose out to the perennially AWOL Rex Tillerson. To save his face, the Trumpisti then made Newt a consigliere of sorts: "strategic planner." That title and a buck will get you a small coffee at Micky D's.

Enter Wife #3. Last week, the White House announced that the president was nominating Madame Gingrich to be ambassadress to the Holy See. Her qualifications? Why, being married to the hyper-imaginative, disgraced ex-speaker of the House of Reps. Speaks Italian? Nope. Served in any capacity overseas? Nope. Wrote a bunch of books and articles on foreign policy? Nope. But that golden German helmet she sports and stiff smile make her look harmless enough. And, oh! She's Catholic. So am I. And nobody's asked me to be envoy to the Vatican.

Admittedly, the Vatican post, like Luxembourg and Dublin, is viewed by politicians as a throwaway sinecure, always used as a reward bauble to the party rich and faithful. Since Washington established diplomatic relations with the Vatican in 1984, none of the American ambassadors there have been career diplomats. The thinking goes: just how much damage can a party hack do in a micro-state comprising 110 acres and 1000 residents? Never mind that the pope is the spiritual leader of one-and-a-quarter billion Roman Catholics. I wonder who the patron saint of Incompetents is. Maybe St. Doofus of the Illiterati?

I'll admit that I've been poised to pounce on the bad appointments of a really bad administration. But the lack of action has been eerie. It's been mostly crickets. RExxon Tillerson is the phantom captain of a ghost ship. Bats are shitting guano from the gilded ceilings of vacant front offices of our embassies around the world. Half the employees at Foggy Bottom hang out in the department's (actually quite good) cafeteria, gossiping over cold coffee, I hear, for lack of direction and work. Of the places Trump is visiting on his first overseas travel as president - Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Vatican, Italy (a G-7 meeting) and Belgium (NATO summit), only Tel Aviv has a U.S. ambassador (Trump's exceptionally busy bankruptcy lawyer whom even Likud regards as too right-wing radical).

President Obama appointed 16 ambassadors in his first 100 days in office, according to the American Foreign Service Association. In his first four score and twenty, President Trump nominated seven. It has since climbed to nine, with the announcement last week of San Diego developer Doug Manchester to be ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to the Commonwealth of the Bahamas. Another micro-state. What do you expect for a measly fifty grand deposited lickety-split into a chimerical Trump super PAC? Ambassador-to-be Manchester's patriotism is much to be admired. His qualifications for the position are not.

Seven of the nine ambassadors nominated by Trump are noncareer, according to AFSA. They include ex-South Carolina governor Nikki Haley to the UN post, Iowa governor Terry Branstad to Beijing, and bankruptcy hack/fanatical Zionist, David Friedman to Tel Aviv (you might need to change that to Jerusalem by the time you read this). This week, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will take up another political appointee, Nashville private-equity investor William Hagerty for Tokyo. Gee, I hope Mr. Hagerty gets his Japanese up to level 3-3 (on State's language proficiency scale) before packing up his collection of cummerbunds for the long flight to the Land of the Rising Donors.

Lewis Eisenberg, the finance chairman of the Republican National Committee and Trump's main campaign money man, is rumored to be named U.S. ambassador to Italy. He likes the food there, they say. Another veteran statesman, New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, an heir to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune, as a serious rainmaker having scared up $106.7 million for Team Trump, is slated to take up the crown jewel in American diplomacy: ambassador to the Court of St. James. I wonder if he realizes that is in London, England. I was aide to the sole career U.S. ambassador to that post in the 234 years of relations between the two countries. Ray Seitz forgot more about statecraft in his sleep than Grand Poobah of the NFL Johnson will ever know.

"By the time he got the nomination, there wasn't time to build a network of bundlers," Fred Malek, a Republican cash-trafficker told USA Today. Think about it. This administration's criterion for selecting its top diplomats is recruiting from a "network of bundlers." Boss Tweed would be proud!

So, the shambolic Trump operation will spring upon the American people and the globe more of its continuing Grand Guignol of misfits, tin foil hatters, alternate fact-diffusers, voodoo economics shamans and gazillioneers-in-search-of-fancy-titles. In keeping with Jared, Ivanka, et al. and burgeoning conflict of interests entanglements, Trumplandia resembles a 16th century Ottoman dynastic court more than a modern nation state.

I'll have fun reporting on it all. But I'm boycotting future commencement ceremonies where, as with their ambassadorships, these clowns will be awarded degrees they entirely don't deserve.