Still Biden His Time on Ambassadorial Nominees

According to the Current Ambassador Tracker from our friends at AFSA, as of mid-May the Biden administration has nominated only ten persons to fill 189 total positions.

C'mon, man!© You know how long it'll take to get people through Senate confirmation hearings. If you want anybody in those positions this year, then stop the malarkey and appoint somebody, already.

ASEAN: A Somewhat Expedient Ambassadorial Nomination

Ex·pe·di·ent \ik-ˈspē-dē-ənt\ adjective 1: suitable for achieving a particular end in a given circumstance; 2: characterized by concern with what is opportune; especially: governed by self-interest

Foreign Policy magazine's blog The Cable isn't happy about a new ambassadorial nomination:

On the same day he visited his boyhood home of Indonesia, President Obama nominated David Carden, a securities lawyer and top fundraiser from his presidential campaign, to be the United States' first ever resident ambassador to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). But to Washington's Asia policy community, Carden is a complete unknown.

Carden, who chairs the securities litigation and SEC enforcement practice at the law firm Jones Day, partnered with his wife Rebecca Riley to raise at least $500,000 for Obama's campaign. The campaign didn't disclose exact fundraising figures for their biggest bundlers, but Carden and Riley were among Obama's top 35 fundraisers.

-- snip --

The choice of Carden, who has limited diplomatic or regional expertise, came as a surprise to many in the Asia community that he will now be working with on a daily basis.

"We don't know him," said Ernie Bower, director of the Southeast Asia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "He doesn't have a lot of experience in Southeast Asia as far as I can tell. I still don't know the rationale for matching him up with this job."

-- snip --

"Given that it's a new position, the very fact that there are no rules for what the U.S. resident ambassador does, I would prefer to have someone with extensive diplomatic experience," said Michael Auslin, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "Someone with a diplomatic background is more preferable because you're not just dealing with one country you can bone up on, you're dealing with 10 countries" ...... "We already have ambassadors to all of these nations, now we are going to have someone on top of that structure. We just don't know how much of this has been thought out," Auslin said.

AFSA can now fill that vacant ASEAN slot on its Ambassador List.

White House "Unaware of Historic Norms" for Ambassadorial Appointments?

The Washington Times had a story yesterday that quoted unnamed "senior administration officials" and one named source, the acting president of the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA), to the effect that the Obama administration was planning to exceed the normal 30/70 ratio of political appointees to professional ambassadors until AFSA interceded.

I find it very hard to believe the administration was unaware of the normal practice. Even assuming that was true of Obama and his core staff, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton certainly can't plead ignorance. More likely, the administration had more than the usual number of fundraisers standing in line waiting for appointments. In two lines, actually, since Hillary must have had her own list of people expecting quid pro quo for supporting her losing campaign.

Reading between the lines, it seems the story here is that Obama took precedence over Hillary in putting his friends and fundraisers forward for ambassadorial appointments, bumping her people out of line, until eventually she backed AFSA's protests to hold political appointees to the usual 30%. All in the public interest, of course, but I'm sure the fact that her people weren't in line anymore helped Hillary see where the public's interest lay.

Career diplomats protest Obama appointments:

The White House, unaware of historic norms, had been on track to give more than the usual 30 percent of ambassadorial jobs to political appointees until objections from career diplomats forced it to reconsider, administration officials say.

As a result of the reversal, some donors to President Obama's election campaign - as well as senior advisers and other supporters of the campaigns of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton - are likely to find their hopes of being rewarded with an embassy dashed.

"The White House has come around, and we truly expect that, at the end of the process, the balance will be within historical norms," said one senior administration official who asked not to be named because he was discussing internal deliberations.

Mr. Obama has been criticized in recent weeks for continuing the tradition of handing out ambassadorships to major campaign donors with no experience in foreign affairs.

The Washington Times reported Tuesday that an old college roommate, the head of an entertainment production company and a lawyer whose family made its money selling vacuum cleaners are among more than a dozen people who have been given ambassadorships after raising a total of at least $4 million for Mr. Obama's campaign, according to public records.

The decision to uphold the historic ratio of 30 percent political appointees and 70 percent career diplomats came only after members of the Foreign Service protested to White House staff and Mrs. Clinton's chief of staff, Cheryl D. Mills, officials said.

"There was some question about how sacrosanct the 30 percent was," the senior administration official said.

Although the 30-70 ratio is not official, "all administrations have adhered fairly closely to it in the last several decades," said Steven B. Kashkett, acting president of the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA), the diplomats' union.The U.S. has 175 ambassadorial posts.

Senior political appointees at both the White House and the State Department apparently were not aware of past practice and were en route to exceeding 30 percent political appointees, several career diplomats said. That message was conveyed to Harry K. Thomas Jr., who until recently was director-general of the Foreign Service, they added.

Concerned that too many political supporters of Mr. Obama, Mr. Biden and Mrs. Clinton, who ran separate campaigns during last year's Democratic primaries, may be expecting to become ambassadors, career officials at the State Department alerted Ms. Mills several weeks ago. She raised the matter with Mrs. Clinton and later involved the White House, officials said.

"The thinking on this issue has evolved at the White House," the senior administration official said. "They have come to recognize its importance in light of the president's campaign promises."

He noted that those who expected jobs but will not get them now should not be too concerned, because the administration "will need talent later."

It was nice of the senior administration official to throw Hillary's people - both her fund raising people and her Foreign Service people - that bone. Don't despair, guys. Keep hoping. Your day will come. Any time now. If not in Obama's first term, then maybe in his second. Or certainly in Hillary's future administration, which will happen someday, but only you raise more and more money.