Will Hillary's Friends Get The Embassies?

Bit of a strange piece in Al Kamen’s column in the Washington Post this morning (emphasis added at the end):

EMBASSY GATEKEEPERS

It's getting to be that time of year when ambassadorial wannabes are waiting for the final handshake. For fat-cat contributors looking for vanity postings in Europe, the people to see at the White House -- and to check in with in general -- are the fundraising folks. That would be President Obama's deputy campaign finance chairman, David Jacobson (who's taken Canada), and his national finance director, Julianna Smoot. They'll check your qualifications -- such as when you started giving to Obama and whether you first supported somebody else -- especially Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton -- how much you gave, when you stopped giving and then how much you gave and bundled for Obama.

The biggest plums -- England, France, Italy etc. -- are long gone. There might be a few lesser, but still quite fine, European ones left.

Many of the real working embassies often reserved for non-career people -- places in Asia such as Japan, India, China, maybe Vietnam or Germany or perhaps Russia, or Brazil or South Africa -- are said to be the last to be nailed down. Names float up and then down for a number of these. For example, there was Rick Inderfurth and then Timothy J. Roemer for India, Wendy R. Sherman and then Jim Leach for China, and Joseph F. Nye and then Norman Y. Mineta for Japan. This phenomenon, we were told, is because Clinton has been pushing her own favorites and opposing Obama's picks. In some places the tussling occasionally has gotten most intense.

Curious. We had read somewhere that Obama won the primaries. No?

No. Always strong, power has shifted in State’s direction on ambassadorial selections in the last several administrations. Under Bush, Colin Powell insisted on this. Once a selection had been made by the “D” committee (so-called because it was headed by the Deputy Secretary of State, then Richard Armitage), it was virtually impossible to change. Any number of disappointed (and highly qualified) former Bushies who sought ambassadorships can tell the tale.

To quote Mozart,“Se vuol ballare, Signor Obama”: You may go dancing, Signor Obama, but State calls the tune. And if you try to change that, particularly on personnel and privileges, they will turn on you. And personnel is policy.