Caroline Kennedy and American Lordships
If you’ve always wanted to be a lord, but weren’t born into the aristocratic English family, you should seriously consider becoming an ambassador. Don’t worry, they only stick qualified diplomats in the truly dangerous countries which require split second decisions. Most ambassadors attend cocktail parties in swanky cities. Caroline Kennedy just joined their ranks.
The daughter of JFK, Caroline has been a Kennedy professionally her entire life. For this great accomplishment of being a Kennedy, plus a timely op-ed supporting then-candidate Barack Obama, she was rewarded with the prestigious ambassadorship to Japan last week. Her previous public service experience came in the form of “almost becoming a senator.” When Hillary Clinton abdicated her senate seat in 2009, then-governor David Patterson seriously considered appointing Caroline as her successor. She dropped out “for personal reasons,” which may have been from initially having no explanation for why she wished to be a senator, to the utter lack of relevant experience, to the revelation that she had not bothered voting in several previous elections (including a general election for senator).
Somehow she is now our representative in Japan. I don’t believe she speaks Japanese, but I imagine she’s probably visited at some point. Or perhaps she skipped voting in various elections to go to Japanese language classes.
Kennedy’s appointment irks me in particular because she more or less inherited a plum job by virtue of family celebrity status. Most US ambassadors obtain their glamorous ribbon-cutting positions through meritocracy: they donate trashcans full of money to the president’s campaign. Not that I like either ambassadorial route. In any other country we would recognize the naked exchange of millions of dollars in campaign contributions for a cushy job as Kremlinesque cronyism. In America it has been commonplace for decades, and it doesn’t seem to rankle anyone.
Next time you want to feel good about your job qualifications, peruse a list of US Ambassadors and their attendant qualifications. Here’s a hypothetical but emblematic example of the two personalities which dominate our embassies:
“John L. Fenton–Ambassador to West Africa. Fenton served in the Peace Corp for three years after graduating from Harvard, then because a foreign service officer. After being wounded at an embassy shooting in Mozambique, he took a leave of absence to study a PhD in international relations, as well as learning seven additional languages, including semaphore. He became Deputy Ambassador to Ghana in 1998 and served there, without any airconditioning, until his recent appointment last year.”
“Janet ‘Skippy’ Bascomb–Ambassador to Holstein. Bascomb, a life-long Democrat who donated over $4.6 million to the president’s reelection campaign. She loves floral arrangements and Two and a Half Men reruns.”
The former guy (you usually spot these in countries with a lot of warlords) worked himself bald for twenty years in some godawful location. Whereas European countries with top-notch bistros tend to receive political appointments who, until their nomination, limited international travel to skiing in Montreal or sipping mojitos in Cancun.
Tourism-based foreign policy experience is just the sort of substantive training which lends itself to choice ambassadorships. Ambassador Kennedy’s reception in japan involved a literal golden carriage. According to Bloomberg News, “Kennedy’s ambassadorship becomes official in Japan on Nov. 19, when she will travel through the streets of Tokyo in an antique carriage drawn by two horses to the Imperial Palace to present her credentials to Emperor Akihito.” Hardly flashy.
I doubt we could pass off courtiers quite so easily in the 1850s. Back then an ambassador was an actual representative of the United States. If something crazy happened in Austria, it would take several days before word could reach Washington. The ambassador had to be able to think on his feet. Now, with the Internet and instantaneous communication, when is an ambassador ever going to need to make a split-second Defcon 4-level decision in Sweden? Infrequently. Thus we dole out ambassadorships to people whose skills in life do not involve foreign languages or international relations prowess, but rather the ability to rake in campaign contributions, or being part of a nascent American political dynasty.
I have two suggestions. First, can we make it a requirement that our ambassadors to other nations must know the host language and possibly have visited at some point? I feel this is a nice gesture to the country we’re dispatching a political flunky to. Further, why don’t we make it a law that henceforth anyone who becomes an ambassador must pay a one-time tax equalling their campaign contributions to the president who appointed them? This will either ensure a bit less cronyism, or if not, at least offset embassy costs to some extent.