The Foreign Service Journal, March 2016

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MARCH 2016 19 the recent American debate over the Iran nuclear deal—a debate in which speak- ers ignored the actual agreement and preferred to make brave proclamations of indignation about the few virtues and many vices of the Islamic Republic. “This compensation provision will not end the mistrust and hostility. For me per- sonally, it will not open that long-sought ‘road back to Tehran’ on which we one day hope to take our grandchildren for a voyage of self-discovery. For our shrink- ing group of former hostages, however, it was definitely good news and a huge step forward after decades of frustration, losing court battles and stubborn opposition.” —Shannon Mizzi, Editorial Assistant Political Appointee Ambassadors: Where Do They Come From? L ongtime readers know that AFSA remains concerned about the high number of political-appointee ambas- sadors. For close to 50 years, the balance in our ambassadorial ranks has been approximately 30- to 35-percent politi- cal and 65- to 70-percent career Foreign Service. Political appointees are often painted with the same broad brush—bundlers and political hacks lacking relevant expe- rience and competence for the job. This isn’t necessarily always the case. We thought it might be interesting to look at President Barack Obama’s list of political-appointee ambassadors and their backgrounds. By the end of 2015, the president had appointed 135 individuals from outside the career Foreign Service to chief-of-mission spots—representing 32.4 percent of all his ambassadorial nomina- tions since 2009. To compare their backgrounds, we divided them into seven distinct catego- ries: law, finance/business/consulting, government, entertainment, military, politics and other. That last category encompasses a variety of experiences, including academia, advocacy, educa- tion, engineering, journalism, fashion and professional sports. The range of backgrounds is note- worthy: one is a former longtime senator fromMontana (Max Baucus, China); another is a former producer of the tele- vision series “Alias” (Crystal Nix-Hines, UNESCO); a third is a former profes- sional baseball player (Mark Gilbert, New Zealand and Samoa); and yet another is a former associate justice on California’s Supreme Court (Carlos Moreno, Belize). We also have the daughter of a president (Caroline Kennedy, Japan) and—notoriously—a producer of the long-running soap opera “The Bold and the Beautiful” (Colleen Bell, Hungary). And where do these individuals serve? Fifteen serve in Western Europe; 14 in international organizations; four in East Asia; three each in the Middle East and North/Central America; two each in East- AFSA/JEFFLAU