Are there qualifications for the people we send to foreign countries as our ambassadors?

With her Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearings to serve as ambassador to the Bahamas coming up Monday, former White House lawyer Cassandra Butts better be prepared to have a genius like Young Johnny McCranky or Marco Rubio ask her "the ever-been question."

by Ken

It's not exactly news that many if not most of our ambassadors to foreign countries don't count high among their credentials any great familiarity with the countries they're tapped to represent us in. It's a pretty good guideline that if the country is anyplace a sensible person is likely to want to go, our ambassador there was chosen chiefly for his or her prowess at fund-raising for the president who appoints him/her.

As for countries that no sensible person would want to go to, well, that's what we have career diplomats for. And they'll take those jobs because it's their only shot, in the normal course of things, to rise to full ambassadorial status, thereby positioning themselves for possible better jobs to come. But those jobs won't be as ambassadors in London or Paris or Prague or Tokyo or . . . well, you get the idea.

When I was younger and more naive, I used to wonder how it could be that we sent ambassadors to countries where they didn't even speak the language, even when the language isn't one of the world's more exotic ones. I came to understand how laughable that concern was. In the vetting process it may be asked whether acandidate for an ambassadorship has heard of the country he/she is being considered for, but I doubt that even that's thought of as an absolute requirement. Probably it's hoped that before the actual nominee faces the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for confirmation, he/she will have learned how to find the country on a map.

A related issue has suddenly been raised now by, of all people, Republican senators on the Foreign Relations Committee. Of course the chance that they might ask questions such as the one they seem to have settled on for the moment -- have you visited the country? -- of a Republican nominee seem slim to none, or maybe none to none. And as Al Kamen points out near the end of the piece we're about to look at, visiting a place isn't the same thing as knowing anything about it. Plenty of people who've visited countries know less than nothing about them.

I don't suppose there's much chance that the distinction would be understood by the FRC Republicans, most of whom could be most politely described as clowns. Young Johnny McCranky, for example, has demonstrated with his travels that it's not only possible but easy to know less about a country after you've been there than you knew before. Assuming it's possible to know less than Young Johnny knows about, well, much of anything.

Looking for a job as an ambassador? Do your homework and travel to that country.

By Al Kamen, Published: February 11

Nomination disasters often add new questions for potential picks undergoing background checks.

For example, after President Bill Clinton's first choice for attorney general, Zoe Baird, went up in flames over an illegal nanny, folks are now asked about household employees. Last month, at a cringe-inducing performance by mega-bundlers for President Obama before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) apparently added a question to the mix: whether the nominees have ever been to the countries where they hope to be stationed.

It was a devastating hearing, especially for Chartwell Hotels chief executive George Tsunis, who hadn't been to -- and didn't seem to know much about -- Norway, his intended post.

Last week, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) posed the ever-been question to Noah Mamet, the big bundler picked as ambassador to Argentina. Alas, no.

Remember, however, that such a lack of familiarity is hardly new. A Loop fan recalled the legendary Maxwell Gluck, chosen by President Dwight Eisenhower to go to Ceylon in 1957. Gluck was the wealthy owner of a chain of women's clothing stores, a major GOP contributor and a breeder of thoroughbred horses. At his Senate hearing, he was asked the name of the premier of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). He said, our source recalled, something like "I look forward to learning that when I get to Colombo."

Gluck, blistered in the press, later said he knew the name -- he just couldn't pronounce it. In any event, he served one year, apparently without incident. Eisenhower "angrily denied" that he gave Gluck the job because of campaign contributions, according to Gluck's 1984 obituary, which noted that "the incident prompted the Senate to open up hearings on ambassadors' qualifications." (Guess the hearings didn't amount to much.)

Note 1: To Cassandra Butts, the former White House lawyer nominated Monday to be ambassador to the Bahamas: You may be asked whether you have been there. (Too late to go now. You can hear the outrage: "Mr. Chairman, she hasn't been confirmed and yet she insults us by going.") So, if you haven't been, you'll have to rely on credentials like Hill and White House experience and your work on the Millennium Challenge Corporation, an international development organization.

Note 2: To future mega-bundlers. Pick the countries you'd like to be appointed to and visit them now, or in the spring, so you can say you've been.

But just having been to a country, while certainly a good thing, is neither synonymous with expertise nor a great predictor of success. After all, some of the "experts" who got us into Iraq had been there. Donald Rumsfeld had even hung out with Saddam Hussein.

Also, many career Foreign Service officers rotate from one continent to another every so often -- a practice said to have been pushed by former secretary of state Henry Kissinger as a way to ward off "clientitis" or "going native" -- and that seems to work out okay, though largely because they are diplomats dedicated to doing the job.

Maybe, to quote Nats outfielder Bryce Harper, the "Have you been?" demand is something of "a clown question, bro."

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