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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The Worst Thing About Kerry Becoming Secretary Of State: Anti-Cuba Zealot Bob Menendez Gets The Chair Of Foreign Relations Committee

Similar (very bad) agenda when it comes to Cuba

The GOP has been successful in forcing the dependably craven Obama to appoint John Kerry Secretary of State. Who cares which member of the wealthy elite gets these jobs? There's not a jot of difference between John Kerry and Susan Rice policy-wise. But with Kerry out of the way two things happen-- Scott Brown gets a chance to steal a Massachusetts Senate seat and Bob Menendez (D-NJ) becomes chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The difference in style between Kerry and Menendez couldn’t be greater. The patrician Kerry is known for his diplomatic skills, his long, detailed speeches, and his loyalty to Obama on foreign policy issues. Menendez, the only Hispanic Democrat in the Senate, is blunt and an aggressive interrogator during hearings. He also doesn’t mind going against the administration, as he has done over the past year in pushing-- and winning-- ever tougher sanctions against Iran.

“He’s a bull in a china shop, a street fighter,” said a senior aide for the Senate Banking Committee, on which Menendez also serves.

The focus of the Foreign Relations committee likely would shift significantly under a Menendez chairmanship, panel aides say. Menendez, together with Illinois Republican Mark S. Kirk, is expected to continue his efforts to sanction Iran as punishment for continuing its nuclear enrichment program. Menendez led the charge over the past two years to cripple Iran’s economy-- moves he says strengthen the administration’s hand in any negotiations with Iran but which some critics say only convince Tehran’s leaders that the real aim of the sanctions is to bring down the regime.

Since last December, the Senate overwhelmingly passed three rounds of Iran sanctions over the objections of the White House, which has sought to preserve its dominance over foreign policy.

Menendez, whose parents moved from Cuba to New York in 1953, also is expected to raise the profile of human rights abuses by the Castro regime in Cuba. Representing a major Cuban-American community in New Jersey, he has been an outspoken opponent of any moves to ease relations with Havana-- something that could complicate any efforts by the Obama administration to reach out to Cuba in its second term.

With an asshole like Menendez running the committee, Bob Corker (R-TN), also an asshole, taking over from Richard Lugar as Ranking Member, and, even worse, McCain joining the committee, Obama will be able to look forward to a lot of misery from a new quarter.

Most people outside of New Jersey (and Cuba) first heard of Menendez when he achieved the impossible. He presided over the abject loss of what was arguably the safest Democratic seat in the U.S. Senate. His first task as the new head of the DSCC was to hold Kennedy's Massachusetts Senate seat. Thanks, at least in part, to Menendez' ineptness and clear lameness, the very same voters who had given Obama a 62-38% win over McCain handed the GOP veto power over every single nomination and every piece of legislation. Menendez can't be expected to shoulder 100% of the blame, of course, but he was the only person whose charge was specifically holding onto Democratic Senate seats.

After that stunning debut, he then involved himself-- against party rules-- in the Democratic primary in the state with the most vulnerable Republican incumbent, North Carolina's Richard Burr. Not happy that the state's popular Secretary of State, Elaine Marshall-- a tad too progressive, a tad too harsh on Wall Street banksters, and a tad too... well unmale for a pig like Menendez (after all North Carolina already has a woman senator; they're not ready for two)-- the clueless New Jersey thug butted in and offered to bankroll an unknown empty suit to save the nomination from falling into Marshall's hands. Even after spending a small fortune on pushing his candidate and failing miserably in the first round, he insisted on a pointless, expensive charade of a runoff that he lost again-- by a huge margin, having wasted even more money that should have been invested into defining Burr.

Many Democrats are grumbling that if the former ward healer and corrupt boss of Hudson County had been paying attention, DeMint would never have gotten away with inserting Alvin Greene as his "opponent" in the South Carolina race. But Menendez was busy elsewhere-- working on his hideous pet project: toppling the Cuban government. Few Democrats realize that Menendez is the most toxic obstacle in the normalization of relations between the U.S. and Cuba. His obsession with inflicting more pain on the Cuban people is nothing short of psychotic and is more important to him than anything else in his miserable, worthless existence. That's why it's so alarming that he's taking over the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Two years ago, when the House Agriculture Committee voted to ease restrictions on travel and commerce between the U.S. and Cuba, Menendez, hysterical, dropped everything and went on the warpath. In committee only 4 Republicans supported the bill, which passed 25-20 and must now go through further legislative hurdles. Menendez sides with the deranged GOP cold warriors.

Proponents of the bill said it would be a major boost for American farmers. The bill, which would allow American commodities to be sold directly to Cuba and allow some direct financial transactions with Cuban banks, is supported by several business and farming groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Farmers Union.

“This is a great opportunity to expand trade,” said Representative Collin C. Peterson, Democrat of Minnesota and the chairman of the committee. He added that American travel to Cuba would “show the Cuban people how great democracy can be.”

"I oppose and will filibuster any attempt to pass the bill in the Senate," he thundered, still the hackish big city boss, ready to deploy every anti-Cuba propaganda trick left over from the Cold War. "The big corporate interests behind this bill couldn’t care less about whether the Cuban people are free or not-- they only care about padding their profits by opening up a new market. Repression is repression and dictatorships are dictatorships, no matter where they are located or whether you want to use their resorts." Aside from how bad this development is for the Cuban people, Menendez's elevation is really bad news for Alan Gross, currently in his third year in a Cuban prison.

After Barack Obama emerged victorious from his reelection campaign, perhaps no one—save the president himself—was more relieved than Alan Gross, a 63-year-old development worker serving a 15-year prison sentence in Havana on charges of trying to undermine the Cuban state. Gross, a former Obama campaign volunteer, filled out his absentee ballot from inside the prison hospital where he often passes his time watching Cuban baseball on TV. His hope: with the election now over, the U.S. can negotiate with the Cuban government to get him out of prison.

  Ever since Gross was arrested three years ago at a Havana hotel, analysts say talks between the two countries have been mired in Cold War politics. From the beginning, the U.S. government has said that Gross was merely trying to improve Internet access for Cuban Jews. In reality, Gross was setting up wireless networks outside the government’s control as part of a provocative program by the United States Agency for International Development. Its aim: to promote democracy and weaken the iron grip of the communist state. Taking part in these programs is illegal on the island, yet the Cuban court made bombastic claims, and Gross’s imprisonment has been denounced as “arbitrary” in a U.N. ruling to be released later this month.

  Havana disputes the U.N. ruling and is still upset about USAID’s democracy programs, but Cuban officials have reportedly said they know that Gross was not a spy and are willing to work out a deal to let him go. For more than a year now, Havana has been hinting at a tacit trade: Gross for the Cuban Five, a group of intelligence agents imprisoned in the States for conspiracy to commit espionage, mostly on anti-Castro groups in Florida. With the election now behind him, Obama has some leeway, but a deal remains politically tricky. It could become more difficult if Sen. John Kerry joins the cabinet, thereby elevating Sen. Robert Menendez, a Cuba hardliner, to head the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “Menendez would have considerable clout in blocking the administration’s efforts to change policy toward Cuba,” said Peter Kornbluh, a Cuba analyst at the National Security Archive, a D.C.–based nonprofit.

As John Kerry assumes the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he flashes back to his first contact with the committee

“I am honored to serve as chairman of a committee which I know from my own experience as a young man can impact the course of our security and help advance our values and interests in the world."

-- Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, on being named to chair
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

We'll continue our two-part update on 2010 Senate races -- with Senate Guru's report on the Missouri race -- in the next post. For now, let's return to the Senate that goes into action next month. Yesterday Majority Leader Harry Reid submitted his list of proposed chairmanships, and despite the large number of major changes, there were no surprises. However, our friend Bob Geiger (as we often note, one of the really good people) has a special take, on his blog BobGeiger.com, on the elevation of John Kerry to chair Foreign Relations. -- Ken

Kerry Comes Full Circle on Foreign Relations Committee

On April 22, 1971, young Lieutenant Junior Grade John F. Kerry appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations committee to give testimony in hearings about ending the Vietnam war. The opportunity put Kerry center stage in the anti-war movement and, sadly, would later become the linchpin in Republican attacks on his patriotism when he became the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004.

Of course the rest is history and the Senate part of Kerry's story began when he was elected to that body in 1984 and he has been a member of the Foreign Relations committee ever since.

And things really came full circle on Monday when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) announced that Kerry would be the new chairman of that powerful committee for the 111th Congress, which convenes in January.

“I am honored to serve as Chairman of a committee which I know from my own experience as a young man can impact the course of our security and help advance our values and interests in the world," said Kerry. "I look forward to working with all members of the committee to help strengthen America’s hand in Afghanistan and Pakistan, work towards global climate change solutions, and end the war in Iraq responsibly."

"We have a big agenda ahead of us, just as our country faces big challenges across the globe.”

During his tenure on the committee, Senator Kerry has chaired the Asia and Middle East subcommittees and authored and passed major legislation on international drug trafficking, global AIDS, international money laundering, and climate change – and negotiated the UN’s genocide tribunal to prosecute war crimes in Cambodia’s Killing Fields.

“John will do an excellent job as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the nation’s fortunate to have him in this high position," said Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA). "I know he’ll make significant contributions to our foreign policy in dealing with the many challenges we face in our relationships with other countries, and he’ll work well with President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton to restore America’s respect in the world.”

Kerry assumes his chairmanship with Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) moving on to the White House and the only Democratic colleague with more seniority, Chris Dodd (D-CT), choosing to remain chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs committee.

AIDES TO SENATOR KERRY ADD "ONE MORE DETAIL"

When JK gave his testimony against the Vietnam War in front of the SFR, then-Chairman Claiborne Pell said that he hoped Kerry "might one day be a colleague of ours in this body." Nearly 38 years later, he takes the same seat from which Senator Pell said that.

RECAPPING THE SENATE COMMITTEE CHAIR SHUFFLE

APPROPRIATIONS
With 91-year-old Robert Byrd (WV) relinquishing the chair, Daniel Inouye (HI) gives up the chair of Commerce, Science and Transportation to take over.

COMMERCE, SCIENCE AND TRANSPORTATION
With Chairman Daniel Inouye taking over the Appropriations chair, Jay Rockefeller (WV) takes the job, giving up the Intelligence chair.

INTELLIGENCE
With the departure of Chairman Rockefeller, Dianne Feinstein (CA) is elevated to the chair.

RULES AND ADMINISTRATION
Chuck Schumer (NY) takes over from Senator Feinstein.

FOREIGN RELATIONS
With Joe Biden (DE) leaving the Senate to become vice president, and Chris Dodd (CT) choosing to remain chair of Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, John Kerry (MA) takes over.

SMALL BUSINESS AND ENTRENEURSHIP
Mary Landrieu (LA) replaces Kerry.

FOR A COMPLETE LIST OF SENATE CHAIRMANSHIPS --

None other than our pal Bob Geiger has 'em all, those that haven't changed as well as those that have.

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