Rewarding backers to ambassador’s posts

Quite a few years ago I had a friend whose brother was studying to become a career diplomat. I thought it was exciting as in my youth an innocence about politics I saw it as a glamorous job with foreign travel, getting to know exciting people and at the same time contributing to make the world a better place for the understanding of people of different countries. My friend said her father was not happy with the decision of her brother and was trying to make him change his studies. Well, over the many years that have passed since them I have realized that the father was probably right. Foreign policy could be boring and even dangerous and unless you were quite high up not exciting at all. And even worse, the career diplomats have to put up with whoever they were sent as ambassadors, many times people who did not have any idea about the country or the ideas of the people they were sent to. In the United States for instance, the ambassador posts, specially the really plum postings were given to generally rich or influential people who have heavily contributed to the campaign of the president who appoints them. It has been so with many presidents and it has not changed with our current president of ‘change’ Barack Obama. Even though he promised to end cronyism in Washington, he is about to appoint Louis Susman, a lawyer and financier with little experience of foreign affairs and one of his home town friends and financial backers as US ambassador to London. At 71, Susman was a a vice-president of Citigroup until he retired in February,. As his credentials one could list that he raised at least $500,000 for Obama’s campaign and a further $300,000 for his inauguration.
A a former career diplomat and president of the Washington-based American Academy of Diplomacy, Ronald Neumann wrote to Obama saying that ambassadors should have experience of the country they are appointed to and speaking about the appointment to London he said: “You would think with our most important ally we might occasionally send someone with some experience.” One would, wouldn’t one?