The foreign policy problem caused by Campaign Finance

May 31, 2007

The foreign policy problem caused by Campaign Finance
Posted by Jerry Mayer

Our campaign finance system is so corrupt, it's affecting our foreign policy. While other nations send their best and brightest diplomats to Washington, all too often we send back to their capitals wealthy and often uninformed political financiers. Yeah, this has been happening for a long time, most particularly since Nixon. And both parties are guilty. But lately, it's changed. In the past, the donor ambassadors were sent to relatively unimportant posts, where they could do little harm, except that they sent the message that we didn't think the country was all that important. Bush has taken this to a new level--he's sent several donor ambassadors to very important countries.

In the last six months, I've had the privilege of traveling on business to Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and other parts of Western Europe. And while I don't want to name names because of friends in the State Department, one ambassador in particular was universally regarded as a lightweight. In fact, more than one journalist interpreted his appointment by Bush as a calibrated insult to the host country. One non-State Department official who has interacted with every US ambassador in that country for 25 years told a horrifying story. Our ambassador was scheduled to give a speech in a major city. A reception was planned, and the intellectual and corporate elite were all invited. The ambassador was supposed to speak for a good 40 minutes to an hour, it was intended to be a major address. Instead, he came in and told anecdotes about his life and family for 15 minutes. My source said that it would have been better for our diplomacy if the ambassador had never shown up.

I'm not complaining about the appointment of former politicians--that can often be a better choice than a career diplomat. And also, the status of ambassadors and their range of authority has been greatly lessened by technology (plug for my friend Dave Nickles book on what the telegraph did to diplomacy). But can we at least limit sending big donors to countries that are vacation resorts, and not vital parts of the world order or hemispheric security?

May 31, 2007 at 06:17 PM | Permalink

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May 31, 2007