The Foreign Service Journal, November 2012

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2012 21 inclination is to have Civil Service [members], wherever possible, serve in these posts. I want to recruit young people into the State Department to feel that this is a career track that they can be on for the long term. And so, you know, my expectation is that high-quality civil servants are going to be rewarded.” After four months in office and the naming of a number of big donors to various ambassadorial posts, however, the White House press spokesman, Robert Gibbs, was reduced to trying to deflect criticism of the business-as- usual approach to these appointments with humor. When asked about the qualifications of the nominee for Lon- don, for instance, Gibbs responded, “He speaks English.” Two Cautionary Tales Can someone with no significant government or international experi- ence play such a role just because they made a lot of money and contributed a substantial amount of it to the winning presidential candidate? Some in this cat- egory have been outstanding as ambas- sadors, but others clearly have not. Anyone who wants to understand how embassies can succeed or fail due to their leadership can now consult the Web site of the State Department’s Office of the Inspector General. That office has begun putting its inspection reports online with minimal redaction. Two of the biggest recent failures, judging by the OIG reports now online, were in Luxembourg and Malta. In the former country, the ambassador spent most of her time redecorating the resi- dence. And she was such a bad manager that people were volunteering for ser- vice in Iraq and Afghanistan in order to curtail the time they had to work for her. In Malta, the ambassador neglected AFSA Insurance Plans hirshorn.com/afsa AFSPA www.afspa.org AKA Hotel Residences stay-aka.com Blue Cross Blue Shield Extras.FEPblue.org Clements Worldwide clements.com Embassy Risk Management Embassyrisk.com Tetratech Tetratech.com WJD wjdpm.com supervision of the construction of a new embassy in order to spend his time writ- ing articles for religious publications. Both ambassadors resigned about the time the OIG reports came out. From their biographies, it does not appear that either ambassador had much in the way of management experi- ence. Nor were they in charge of embas- sies in countries one could exactly call challenging. Since 1960, 72 percent of the ambas- sadors posted to capitals in Western Europe and the Caribbean have been political appointees. In Africa and the Middle East, on the other hand, the per- centage of noncareer chiefs of mission has consistently been under 15. (There has never been one in Central Asia.) Put another way, only about 10 percent of the posts with a hardship allowance or danger pay have a political appointee as ambassador. Money Makes the World Go Around To be sure, not all political appoin- tees are big donors. Some are personal friends or political allies of the presi- dent. Others are named to bring racial or gender diversity to a president’s appointments, or to strike a responsive chord with some particular constitu- ency. But the majority have either per- sonally given or have bundled amounts in six figures or more. Shortly after America emerged from World War II as a global power with global interests, the ratio of 70-percent career and 30-percent political appoin- tees was established. It has persisted for the last 60 years and is unlikely to shift toward an even split. The reason is simple: money. The cost of financing a presidential campaign is enormous and growing. In