The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2014

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2014 17 SPEAKING OUT How to Get Better Ambassadors BY DENN I S J ETT W hen an ambassador’s con- firmation hearing makes “The Daily Show,” it is not because it went well. The nominees for ambassadorships to Nor- way, Hungary and Argentina, all major Obama campaign contributors, pro- vided so many cringe-worthy moments when they appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee earlier this year that Jon Stewart had more material than Fox News provides in a month. There was also a flurry of stories in the media about the qualifications (or lack thereof) of these nominees, which raised the hope that higher standards might be possible in the future. Presi- dents appoint people as ambassadors for many reasons, however, and cam- paign contributions is one of them. Still, money does not have to speak louder than foreign policy credentials. There are some limits on the amount an individual can give to a presidential campaign, but thanks to recent Supreme Court decisions, these are largely mean- ingless. And supporters of a candidate for president can bundle the checks of friends without limit for a campaign that Dennis Jett is a professor of international affairs at Pennsylvania State Univer- sity. A retired FSO, he served as ambassador to Peru and Mozambique, on the National Security Council and on assignments in Argentina, Israel, Malawi and Liberia. He is the author of three books: Why Peacekeeping Fails, Why American Foreign Policy Fails and a forthcoming book on American ambassadors (all published by Palgrave Macmillan). He is an occasional contributor to the Journal , whose “So You Wanna Be an Ambassador?” was published in November 2012. now costs over a billion dollars. In an electoral system so thoroughly driven by money, asking a president to cut back on the number of ambas- sadorial titles he can bestow on those who played a critical role in getting him elected is like suggesting the United States unilaterally eliminate its nuclear weapons. One might look to Congress for reform, but members of Congress owe their jobs, in no small part, to their own ability to raise money. In addition, the Senate traditionally gives the president wide latitude in selecting the people he wants as his envoys. Congressional opposition to ambassadorial nomina- tions therefore tends to be ephemeral, partisan and only rarely related to a lack of qualifications. Reform Has Never Been Easy In the late 19th century, profession- alization began to make a serious dent in patronage only after a frustrated job seeker, who thought he should be chief of mission in Vienna, assassinated Presi- dent James Garfield in 1881. It took the criminality of the Nixon administration and the support of Presi- dent Jimmy Carter to bring about the Foreign Service Act of 1980. So, in the absence of another major scandal, there is little hope for change coming from the legislative branch. Yet the need for campaign cash and the existence of a dysfunctional Congress do not mean that nothing can be done to ensure better qualified ambassadorial nominees. AFSA could help bring about modest reform, but its recent efforts are not enough. Take for instance, AFSA’s issuance of the “Guidelines for Successful Perfor- mance as a Chief of Mission.” A group of retired ambassadors put the guidelines together. Most of the members of the group had been career Foreign Service officers, but the group also included sev- eral former political appointee ambas- sadors who were unlikely challengers of the status quo. While the AFSA Govern- ing Board approved the guidelines, the vote was not unanimous. But even if meaningful guidelines could be drawn up, they alone would do little to improve the quality of ambas- sadors. Expecting those who do not meet the criteria to forgo applying for the job is the equivalent of thinking that describing virtue will rid the world of sinners. Another AFSA initiative that is not likely to bring about substantial change is its Freedom of Information Act request for the “certificates of demon-