DON VINCENZO writes:

If the U.S. is failing domestically, it is also declining internationally – in its importance and the prestige that it brings to any negotiation. When the State Department became “an equal opportunity employer,” all bets were off about the future of our foreign relations, and I can describe no better example of this than a recent hearing by President Obama’s selection of three candidates as ambassadors to China, Hungary and Norway, a country where I served at the U.S. Embassy during the late 1980s. (The Washington Post, Federal Page, Jan. 31, 2014.)

Starting with retiring Sen. Max Baucus, the candidate for U.S. Ambassador to China, who began with answering his first question with the response, “I’m no real expert on China,” the mood was set. Colleen Bell, a Hollywood producer who “bundled” $800,000 to the Obama campaign, was clueless about our strategic objectives in Hungary, and George Tsunis, a CEO of  a hotel chain, who “bundled 1.3 million to the Obama campaign in 2012, responded to his questions in a way, described by the Norwegian news outlet, NRK, as “faltering, incoherent and displayed a “total ignorance” of the country.” Does this matter?

I spent nearly 30 years in six embassies in Latin America and Europe, and during that time no ambassador designate, from the career service to political appointees, ever showed up as totally unprepared before the Senate Committee as these three. These candidates are there for their own personal reasons, mainly a pay back to Baucus, and prestige for their C.V.s for the others, but it is hard to believe that they are equipped to carry out their assignments and do what is in the best interests of the U.S.

The Greek philosopher, Plato, wrote, “The regime in the city shapes the regime of the soul.” As our nations’ dysfunction capital leads the way, the country follows, another example of what Lawrence Auster was to call, “the path to national suicide.”

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