Countdown

Home > The Spoils > Ambassadorships

Ambassadorships

There’s a long presidential tradition of rewarding contributors with appointments to glamorous diplomatic posts abroad, regardless of whether they have any relevant skills, experience, or even good judgment. President Dwight Eisenhower, for example, saw fit to appoint a wealthy but clueless GOP donor, Earl E.T. Smith, as ambassador to Cuba in 1957. Smith’s stubborn support of corrupt, bloodthirsty Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista arguably hastened the government’s overthrow by communist Fidel Castro. President Ronald Reagan picked Paul H. Robinson, a former insurance executive who was his chief fundraiser for the 1980 Illinois primary, to be ambassador to Canada. Robinson proceeded to offend our generally congenial neighbors to the north by publicly criticizing them for spending too much on social services and not enough on defense, and by allegedly dubbing the metric system “rubbish.” President Bill Clinton appointed five major “soft money” donors in 1992 to ambassadorial posts, including one two-fer, in which contributor Larry Lawrence became envoy to Switzerland and his wife, Sheila Davis Lawrence, became special U.S. representative to the World Conservation Union, whose headquarters is in Switzerland. President George W. Bush has even more aggressively tapped big donors for ambassadorships. More than 30 Bush “Pioneers” — that is, fundraisers who “bundled” at least $100,000 in contributions — were awarded with ambassadorships.