The Ambassadors

The President of the United States often really seems to be a kind of elected Priest-Monarch. One area in which this is obviously apparent, is his ability to reward cronies and fundraisers with agreeable Ambassadorships overseas. Matt Yglesias, who is too wise to buy the wisdom himself, offers the official justificatory fig-leaf for this patronage:

I had always just thought of this is a kind of casual, widely accepted corruption. But recently I did learn the official story as to why this is good practice, namely that an important political supporter or a friend of the president is likely to have a much easier time of getting access to the Oval Office than any mere foreign service officer would. Thus, it’s arguably better for the host country to have a political appointee than a career FSO. Therefore, this practice helps build good-will and so forth.

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Alexander Larman

Meghan Markle’s tone-deaf wildfire video is hard to stomach

Up to a point Lord Copper! It’s true, for instance, that Jean Kennedy-Smith, appointed Ambassador to Ireland by Bill Clinton, found it easier to get a line to Tony Lake and the White House arguing that State should support an entry visa to the US for Gerry Adams in 1994, whereas Raymond Seitz, the first career diplomat to be Ambassador to the Court of St James in London, opposed the notion not least because Adams had not renounced violence.