Checkbook Diplomacy - Part Three
The system resists fixing
BY Stephanie Mencimer | August 13, 2008
Richard Nixon’s personal lawyer went to prison for soliciting money from major donors who wanted ambassadorships, and when Jimmy Carter showed up at the White House in the wake of Nixon’s scandal-scarred presidency he was determined to clean things up.
He promised to appoint only qualified officials as ambassadors, primarily from the ranks of foreign-service officers, and he largely kept his promise, setting up a committee to screen candidates and keeping the number of political appointees lower than it had been for at least a decade — drawing down the curtain on one of the least subtle acts in the quadrennial drama known as “the buying of the president.” Nixon’s fundraisers had routinely gotten $100,000 or more for ambassadorships.
But the curtain didn’t stay down long. Carter’s was a one-term presidency, and upon taking office Ronald Reagan promptly abolished the screening committee and set to work filling foreign posts with political donors and loyalists. Later efforts to hold down the number of political appointees foundered, and there’s a reason for it: Patronage is systemic in both parties, and election campaigns get ever more expensive — it’s widely expected that the candidates will spend more than a $1 billion in the current campaign. The donations, the appointments, the embarrassments, the scandals are a chronic part of the American political system.
Melvin Sembler, a prolific Republican fundraiser, tells a story — he lived it as well — that drives home what bakes this mess into the system:
Senator Paul Sarbanes: “If it’s going to be a bidding war [for ambassadorial nominations] at least we should put it up for public bid so the money goes to the U.S. Treasury.” (Office of Senator Paul Sarbanes)Sembler, whose company develops shopping malls in the southeast, is a longtime friend of both Presidents Bush. Before the senior Bush appointed him ambassador to Australia in 1989, he had donated $127,000 to the Republican Party. That year, Senator Paul Sarbanes decided to press his objections to the appointment of fundraisers as ambassadors. Sarbanes, then a Democratic senator from Maryland, had been troubled by the number of large donors the senior Bush had named to foreign posts. In the first months of the president’s term, at least seven members of “Team 100,” Bush’s cadre of contributors who gave or raised $100,000 or more for his 1988 campaign, had landed ambassadorial nominations. Sarbanes said at the time, “If it’s going to be a bidding war [for ambassadorial nominations] at least we should put it up for public bid so the money goes to the U.S. Treasury.”
Among the nominees Sarbanes gave particular scrutiny because of lack of qualifications was Sembler. The dustup started after congressional staffers discovered that Sembler and his friend Joseph Zappala, another Florida developer and GOP donor who was appointed ambassador to Spain, had submitted virtually identical answers to the Senate questionnaire probing their qualifications. Sembler wrote, “I have been known as a coalition builder able to organize my colleagues and peers to action in support of worthy civic, charitable, and political causes.” Zappala said, “I am known as a coalition builder. I am able to organize my colleagues and peers to action in support of worthwhile civic, charitable and political causes.”
Both men were eventually confirmed, but the whole experience still sticks in Sembler’s craw. He never won Sarbanes over but was confirmed after he persuaded some Democratic fundraisers to appeal to other Democratic senators and to explain to them the consequences of continuing this intense scrutiny of ambassadorial nominees: The Democrats, Sembler cautioned, would lose many of their best people, who would be reluctant to raise money knowing that they could be subjected to similar scrutiny when Republicans gained control of Congress. “Us fundraisers, we understand it among ourselves,” Sembler said in an interview. “Because somebody’s got to go raise the money.”
Attempts to tamp down on the number of political appointees in the wake of the Nixon spectacle include a 1976 effort by Senator Charles Mathias Jr., Republican from Maryland, who tried to cap the number at 25 percent of all appointments; that same year, then-Representative Al Gore tried to cut that number to 15 percent, but neither effort succeeded. “Both parties need to agree to lower the numbers,” says John Naland, president of the American Foreign Service Association. “The law doesn’t get that far.”
In 1980, toward the end of Carter’s term, Congress did pass the Foreign Service Act to try to shore up the credentials of those appointed to go abroad. It decrees that candidates for ambassadorships should possess knowledge of the language of the host country, as well as an understanding of its economic and political institutions and culture, history, and people. Furthermore, the law says, ambassadors should “normally” be chosen from the Foreign Service, and “contributions to political campaigns should not be a factor” in their selection.
This rule apparently has been applied religiously for ambassadorships to out-of-the-way countries like Guinea or Burma, but when it comes to choice postings in Europe, in English-speaking countries, or in warm, safe, island nations, well, those posts have been reserved almost exclusively for friends and supporters of the president. In fact, when President George H. W. Bush appointed Raymond G.H. Seitz as ambassador to Britain in 1991, it was the first (and only) time that a career foreign service officer — rather than a political appointee — has ever held that coveted post.
Ambassador William Farish III was dubbed so elusive that it was “probably easier to get an interview with Saddam Hussein” than with him. (Department of State)Every administration since Carter left office has had its struggles with ambassadors. The administration of the elder George Bush, hardly the most egregious, nonetheless gave Senator Sarbanes lots to work with as he turned the 1989 ambassadorial confirmation hearings into a media spectacle. In many of the official “certificates of demonstrated competence” filed with the Senate, the State Department listed campaign contributions and fundraising for at least five of Bush’s nominees — even though the Foreign Service Act states clearly that such contributions should not be a factor in any ambassadorial appointment.
In addition to Sembler, Sarbanes shone his spotlight on the nomination of Peter Secchia, a fundraiser for the Michigan Republican Party, as ambassador to Italy. A foul-mouthed lumber tycoon whom Italian newspapers dubbed the “ambassador of dirty words,” Secchia looked forward to his tenure abroad by joking: “I saw the new Italian Navy. Its boats have glass bottoms so they can see the old Italian Navy.” In 1992, Bush’s nominee to the Netherlands donated $100,000 to the Republican Party shortly before being nominated. Then, Donald H. Alexander admitted that he had made the donation — which was more than 10 times larger than the total of his contributions for the previous several years — after discovering that the guy who got the job a few years earlier had done the same thing.
One of the younger Bush’s more notable appointments was William Farish III as the ambassador to Great Britain. Farish, a Texas-born oilman who raised thoroughbred horses in Kentucky, joined with his family to donate more than $140,000 to Republicans in the 2000 election cycle. Farish took the job as a “working sabbatical” and was seldom seen during the run-up to the Iraq war. A Guardian columnist wrote that on the eve of war, “It’s probably easier to get an interview with Saddam Hussein than with William Farish.”
Bush eventually replaced Farish with Robert Tuttle, a $200,000-level fundraiser who had served in the Reagan administration but is better known as a California car dealer. As with his predecessor, Tuttle didn’t impress the British. The mayor of London called Tuttle a “venal little crook” after the U.S. embassy in London refused to pay London’s congestion charge for driving in the city, a move that caused a big stir among the British.
And the younger Bush offered the ambassadorship to Belgium to one of his biggest donors, Missouri businessman Sam Fox. Fox and his family donated $1.5 million to Republican political races between 2000 and 2007, as well as $50,000 to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (now known as Swift Boat Vets and POWS for Truth), the independent group whose ads attacking John Kerry’s record in Vietnam were widely denounced as distortions. The ads were credited with helping to defeat Kerry in the 2004 presidential election. Kerry, who sits on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, was able to question Fox about his donations during his confirmation hearing. After Kerry’s objections to his nomination, Bush withdrew Fox’s name — and later gave him a recess appointment, sidestepping the Senate confirmation process.
Who will be rewarded with ambassadorships in an Obama or McCain presidency remains to be seen, but this much is clear: Early in 2009 a new round of the confirmation drama will begin.