Biden trolls swamp to find ambassadors
Such jobs call for seasoned hands, not mere cronies
By Dean Karayanis - - Monday, November 15, 2021
OPINION:
Although he promised to put diplomacy in the “hands of genuine professionals,” President Joe Biden continues the swamp tradition of using foreign posts to reward cronies. Donors can still buy positions of influence for about the price of a Hunter Biden painting.
Even the Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate has slow-walked Mr. Biden’s unserious nominations. As of his six-month mark, they’d confirmed only a single ambassador. (Barack Obama had 59 at that milestone.) An optimist might’ve thought the White House was carefully vetting candidates but picks like George Tsunis to Greece and Amy Gutmann to Germany dash such Pollyannish hopes.
The Foreign Service Act of 1980 requires that nominees be qualified. But other than contributing a sack of cash to Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) amidst a child sex scandal, what are Mr. Tsunis’s foreign policy bona fides? In his disastrous nomination hearings in 2014, as Mr. Obama’s choice for Norway, he came across as the Hellenic equivalent of Maxwell Smart.
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