The Times reports that Caroline Kennedy will likely be appointed by President Obama to be the next ambassador to Japan. Political appointments are one of the many perks of the presidency. They can reward their campaign supporters and fundraisers with this honor and responsibility. Apparently, Anna Wintour, the evil editor of Vogue, was really pissed off that Obama didn't make her the English ambassador, even though she threw him star-studded parties when he was running for office.
But political appointments suck. Behind the appointee is an army of loyal workers who stick around for ages, who actually know how the job works, and who have to suck up to trust-fund rich people. Yuck.
When I worked at a policy institute in Manhattan, we were hired to document a major transition in the probation department for the city. The guy who was running the agency was a real wonk, who wanted to monitor the change. While he may have had good intentions, he was also mayoral appointee with no experience in the probation department. His workers hated that an outsider was telling them how to do their job. They made the motions to make changes in operations, but they knew that this guy would be onto a new job in a year and all they had to do was bide their time.
Political appointees are bad for business and bad for morale.
Apt. 11d 
The Japanese may actually be very pleased to get Caroline Kennedy as their American ambassador.
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I think it depends on the political appointee and how they treat their job. There was an unfortunate story about the US ambassador to France, who treated the job as an opportunity to join the European aristocracy, with no regard for the dual role she had to play.
And you have the alternate example, a political appointee who wants to take a leadership role, but is only there for the short haul and doesn’t have the nuts and bolts experience.
I think there’s a middle ground political appointee who uses their social skills and lets the career employees do the wonk work. And CK might be such a person.
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I agree with AmyP – it may be that appointing a high-profile ambassador (and especially a Kennedy) is a way of signifying how important you see that country being. The ambassador can function as a kind of monarch, to do the social activities, while the staff can do all the real work. But I’m just guessing.
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Laura’s objecting to the whole system, not to any particular example within it. And quite right too — altogether, an ethos of patronage is really, really, bad both for political campaigning and, worse, for the maintenance of a competent civil service.
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Well, you’ve got to be able to run the damn government. I read once the number of people POTUS could appoint, and the number of people the Prime Minister of UK could appoint, and POTUS was ahead by a factor of about a hundred. It took Mrs Thatcher YEARS to get real control of UK government, with genteel sabotage for her program from the civil service. Whereas ours turns on a dime, by comparison.
You may want it to be hard to make big quick changes: if you do, then you don’t like appointees. But if you think Obama should have been able to change what was going on upon taking office – he needed appointments.
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Genteel sabotage from the civil service probably doesn’t gum things up nearly as much as a Congress where one party painted itself into a corner and now has, for short-term electoral reasons, to block everything without proposing an alternative.
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I dissent pretty strenuously from the idea that the legislative process is “gumming up” government operations. The legislative process is simply democracy in operation. There are alternative systems without this legislative feature, but historically they haven’t worked that well.
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To you and Amy P: Do we expect the Japanese to say “Ooh a KENNEDY” and be impressed? Why? Because that is what functioning as a kind of monarch would mean to me. If not, what are her qualifications for ambassadorship?
Foreign relations doesn’t seem to be her specialty. I thought she worked on education and civil liberties issues. Is this really who we want to help mediate over the Senkaku islands?
It seems more like offering her a consolation prize for not getting Clinton’s senate seat.
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Schmoozing is the qualifications for ambassadorship to fancy countries (which includes the nice places in Europe, but am not sure exactly where Japan fits in.
There’s an document floating around that calculates the purchase price of different ambassadorships — what’s funny about it is how low the “purchase prices” are (a million or so, say, for France). A million would be totally worth it for an ambassadorship to France (say, a few years vacation costs).
(And, yes, it’s schmoozing abroad, when your ambassador, but also schmoozing here in the US, when your appointor is running for office and raising money).
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I think that an ambassadorship with an ally is much more about PR and selling than foreign relations. She’s very qualified.
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A friend of mine is the #2 in the Paris embassy. Runs the place, while the political has fun. I assume that somebody competent will be put in place to run the embassy in Tokyo, too. Once in a while, you get a name appointment who actually does you a whole lot of good – Mansfield in Tokyo was wonderful. Temple at the UN was surprisingly effective – the place was full of diplos who had seen her movies as children, and they were absolutely starstruck.
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“Do we expect the Japanese to say “Ooh a KENNEDY” and be impressed?”
Yes, as a matter of fact. I’m rather surprised she didn’t hold out for a European posting (for instance Ireland). It is a compliment to Japan that she chose it.
“Why? Because that is what functioning as a kind of monarch would mean to me.”
Would we be insulted if a daughter of a revered Japanese Prime Minister was the Japanese ambassador to the US?
Anyway, Japan is a monarchy.
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The whole argument for Caroline Kennedy is that she is a Kennedy. Am I really the only one bothered by the neo-aristocracy? I don’t want anymore Bushes, Gores, Kennedys, or Pauls in office. Fuck ’em.
The U.S. is not a monarchy. Let’s hope it continues to avoid becoming one.
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Politicals are hit and miss. (Laura, you should know this; are you trolling us?) In theory, it can be good to have someone in your country who can quickly get some of the president’s precious time. In practice, they may not actually have that ability, or what they do with it may not be useful to the goals of the mission.
The politicals in high-profile places (Japan, UK, France, other major allies) tend to be quite good. Japan, for instance, has a tradition of receiving an elder statesperson, e.g., Mansfield or Mondale. Kennedy would fit the pattern, which is in turn good for official relations. Harriman apparently charmed tout Paris in the Clinton years. (And if Obama trolled Wintour, then good for him.)
Germany’s funny in that it’s a major ally that sometimes gets a political and sometimes a career. Holbrooke, true to form, was apparently effective but abrasive during his tenure. The other recent career was, I am led to understand, brought in specifically to knock heads with the city government in Berlin and get the embassy at Pariser Platz finally built. He was fun to talk to and what the Germans call “streitfreudig.” The politicals during the Bush years, hm. One extolled the virtues of building up businesses, having himself inherited a fairly large one. The other one I recall was almost equally grating in person, but led a big push for the US missions in Germany to engage with Islam in the country as a major part of their programming; I thought that was a very good idea.
Politicals in smaller postings are where trouble tends to arise. I think there was a recent scandal with the ambassador to Luxembourg, and I recall that several ambassadors to the Holy See have had to be reminded that their role is to represent US policy in Rome, and not vice versa.
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