#us ambassadors

[politiciansandanimals]

Palmerston with his new collar from the new US Ambassador in London, Woody Johnson.

[progressiveactiondaily-blog]

Article(s) of the day: The other reason I find the "Trump is Hitler" narrative distracting is that it encapsulates many people's fears about and strong dislike towards the Trump administration -- but doesn't actually point to any concrete action to take in response.  Activism is most successful when it focuses on specific, actionable policy changes.  Here's a list of six regulatory and legislative changes that Republicans have proposed this week, via Berkeley PhD student Susanna Berkouwer.  Pick one and call your Congresspeople about it today.

1. Trump fires all Ambassadors and Special Envoys, ordering them out by inauguration day.

2. House brings back the Holman rule allowing them to reduce an individual civil service or political appointee's salary to $1, effectively firing them by amendment to any piece of legislation. We now know why they wanted names and positions of people in Energy and State.

3. Senate schedules six simultaneous hearings on cabinet nominees and triple-books those hearings with Trump's first press conference in months and an ACA budget vote, effectively preventing any concentrated coverage or protest.

4. Trump breaks a central campaign promise to make Mexico pay for the wall by asking Congress (in other words, us, the taxpayers) to pay for it.

5. Trump threatens Toyota over a new plant that was never coming to the US nor will take jobs out of the US.

6. House passes the REINS act, giving them veto power over any rules enacted by any federal agency or department. For example, if FDA or EPA bans a drug or pesticide, Congress can overrule it. 

[sithhoplite]

Key Countries with no Ambassador

It has been a year into the orange shit gibbons term and key countries are still without Ambassadors.

1.) Turkey

2.) South Korea - You would think this one is rather important

3.) Saudi Arabia

4.) Jordan

I am so not surprised that Trump supporters see nothing wrong with this or bring up Obama to deflect. The lack of geo-politics is astounding yet not surprising.

[newstfionline]

What Does a U.S. Ambassador Really Do?

Jake Rossen, Mental Floss, March 3, 2017

In the movies, U.S. ambassadors often appear to come to the aid of jailed foreigners in inhospitable prisons. In the press, they’ve been vilified for not spending all of their time in the country they’ve been assigned to represent or for not being fluent in the language. Some critics have even referred to their appointment as a kind of payola scheme, with positions being awarded in exchange for campaign contributions to the sitting president.

Ambassadors for the United States seem to wear a variety of faces, but which of them is accurate?

“It varies widely from country to country,” Dennis Jett, a former U.S. ambassador to Peru and Mozambique and current professor of international affairs at Penn State University, tells mental_floss. “France will be very different from Russia. But generally, ambassadors have two functions, one internal and one external.”

The internal function is managing the U.S. embassy itself and all of its employees, which can number from one to 1000 and involve several representatives from the Treasury Department, the CIA, and other government branches. The external function is dealing with the native government, missionaries, and local press in representing the President of the United States.

“You explain what Washington is thinking,” Jett explains, “and explain to Washington what the other government is thinking. You have a lot of people wanting a lot of your time.”

For Jett, that meant getting involved in Mozambique’s highly volatile civil war that resulted in the country’s first free and democratic election in 1994. He had to live up to his diplomat label, encouraging democracy while being careful not to agitate the sitting government with criticism as the press swarmed around him.

On one occasion in Peru, Jett arrived for a social engagement and left early. A half-hour later, terrorists from the country’s Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement stormed the event and kept hostages--including several of Jett’s embassy employees--for 126 days.

Those incidents cast a long shadow over the stereotype that ambassadors do little but arrange parties and entertain foreign dignitaries. “The Middle East is hard,” Jett says. “Pakistan, places like that.” Depending on the conditions of the territory in question, ambassadors may even be eligible for danger pay on top of their regular salary. “It can be as little as 5 percent [extra] or up to 40 percent. If you’re going into a place with malaria or what’s called a ‘hardship post’--a place with a threat of terrorism--you’ll be paid more than if you were going to the Caribbean.”

Jett was a career foreign affairs officer, rising through the ranks of the U.S. Foreign Service as a diplomat and later a Senior Director of African Affairs before securing a post as an ambassador, the top-ranking diplomat. Traditionally, career employees will make up roughly 70 percent of the 180-odd ambassador posts at any given time, with the remaining 30 percent filled by political appointees who contributed to a presidential campaign or have another personal connection to the president.

While these individuals typically get assigned low-risk posts in cushy, tourist-friendly places like Europe or the Caribbean and the standard free lodging, there’s still opportunity for them to risk embarrassment. Mark Austad, Ronald Reagan’s appointee to Norway, was fired for overt womanizing; other appointees quizzed by the Senate before their official hiring have expressed only minimal fluency in the requisite foreign language. In one instance, one wannabe Ambassador to Argentina admitted he had never actually been to the country.

The argument for such reciprocation is that donors are typically wealthy and can afford to bolster weak Congressional spending when it comes to an embassy’s “representational entertaining”--the bureaucratic term for “lavish parties.” But Jett feels that it’s a poor excuse for a tired and unfair system. “We need capable, competent people who speak the language and can carry out the job, regardless of whether they’re rich,” he says.

Ambassadors typically resign following a new president taking over the Oval Office. Appointees typically slip back into the private sector, while career diplomats either return to Washington or consider another ambassadorship.

As for those dramatic interventions on behalf of jailed Americans: Don’t expect to see Jett or his peers stage a spirited rally on your behalf.

“We don’t have the ability to bring that kind of pressure,” he says. “You’re subject to the laws of that area. We can get you the names of some lawyers. Maybe some better food. That’s about it.”

[karadin]

Trump administration will kick all US Ambassadors, political and career out of their positions on Inauguration Day - whether there are replacements or not.

It wouldn’t be a story about Donald Trump if it didn't start with “in a break with precedent.” In this case, it’s a break with decades of precedent: Trump has told all  U.S. ambassadors around the world that they must return home by Inauguration Day, full stop, end of story, consequences be damned.

And the consequences are plenty. For starters, it means that America won’t have diplomats in place in many countries by the time Trump is sworn in. That's a situation that would endure for months, since the Senate has to actually confirm each new ambassador, one by one. It's also liable to frighten our allies and embolden our not-so-allies, though if anything, that’s probably to Trump's liking.

But it’s for exactly these reasons that past presidents have always made exceptions, even for political appointees from the other party, to ensure continuity in our diplomatic relations, and also just not to be raging dicks to people who’ve gone overseas to serve our country. Lots of them, for instance, have families and young children abroad with them—children who are in the middle of their school year. Without visas, these people can’t remain in their host countries and are scrambling to either find a way to stay, or to uproot their kids and place them in new schools back home.

In Costa Rica, Ambassador Stafford Fitzgerald Haney is hunting for a house or an apartment as his family—which includes four school-age children and his wife, who has been battling breast cancer—struggles to figure out how to avoid a move back to the United States with five months left in the school year, according to the diplomats.

Some anonymous Trump apparatchik claimed “there was no ill will in the move,” so of course that means there was. 

At a White House farewell reception that Mr. Obama held on Wednesday night for noncareer ambassadors, many of them commiserated, attendees said, comparing notes about how to handle the situation.

Some expressed dismay that Mr. Trump, whose wife, Melania, has chosen to stay in New York to avoid moving the couple’s 10-year-old son, Barron, to a new school midyear, would not ensure that such allowances were made for American ambassadors.

[newstfionline]

How U.S. presidents choose American ambassadors

By Adam Taylor, Washington Post, November 23, 2016

Ivana Trump, the Czech-born former wife of the president-elect, recently told the New York Post that she thought her ex-husband should nominate her as U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic. That “is where I’m from and my language, and everybody knows me,” she explained.

Ivana is just one of a number of rumored and hopeful ambassadors who could be nominated by Donald Trump’s White House despite having no diplomatic background. There were reports, now denied, that Trump had picked former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee to be ambassador to Israel. On the other end of the scale, another Trump ex-wife, Marla Maples, was reported by the New York Post to be angling for an ambassador gig “somewhere in Africa.”

So far, only one ambassadorial nomination has been confirmed by the Trump team: South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who has been tapped to become U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. The U.N. position has gone to a number of rising political stars in the past, but Haley, a rising Republican with experience working on trade and labor issues, has little foreign-policy experience.

A president picking someone with little or no foreign or diplomatic experience to be an ambassador is not unusual, though. In fact, it’s a largely accepted norm in the United States--although few other countries follow suit.

Over the past few decades, about 30 percent of all ambassadors have been “political” nominees, according to information from the American Foreign Service Association. The other 70 percent were career diplomats who worked their way up through the Foreign Service.

Although many political appointees may be chosen because of their suitability for the job, there is also a questionable but long-standing tradition of awarding ambassadorships to campaign donors or bundlers, too. President Richard M. Nixon can be heard telling his White House chief of staff, in a 1971 recording released decades later as part of the “Nixon Tapes,” that “anybody who wants to be an ambassador must at least give $250,000.”

Sometimes these appointees do not necessarily seem qualified for the job. When President Obama nominated hotel magnate and campaign bundler George Tsunis to become U.S. ambassador to Norway in 2014, Tsunis was publicly grilled about his knowledge, or lack thereof, of the nation by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). His response, one Norwegian outlet said, was “faltering, incoherent.”

Tsunis’s bid to become ambassador to Norway eventually failed, but most political nominees make it through. Many perform without incident during their few years in the job, but some do not. Cynthia Stroum, who served as the ambassador to Luxembourg between 2009 and 2011 after being a major Obama donor, was later accused by officials from the State Department’s Inspector General’s Office of bringing “major elements of Embassy Luxembourg to a state of dysfunction” with her confrontational management style, among other problems.

Supporters of the system suggest that political appointees may have close ties to the president, gaining them stature with their hosts, or they may simply be particularly competent. Investment banker Felix Rohatyn was named ambassador to France by President Bill Clinton in 1997. By the time he left in 2000, he had an enviable reputation as an expert in French politics and was a valuable asset for Washington. “He probably knew as many people in Paris as he did in New York,” Henri Barkey, a former State Department official, later wrote for The Washington Post.

What’s certainly true is that political appointees tend to be sent to the more comfortable postings--Western or Northern Europe, for example, or the Caribbean. Career diplomats, on the other hand, often end up in more obscure places. No political appointee has ever been nominated to a position in Central Asia, perhaps unsurprisingly.

While the State Department has a process for choosing its own career diplomats to take up ambassador spots, critics contend that the process for political appointees is opaque.

There are some constraints on political nominations to ambassadorships. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee can refuse to confirm a nominee, or the recipient country can reject the person, but such actions are rare. In theory, at least, career diplomats working under a politically appointed ambassador might constrain any inappropriate behavior.

Still, many in the foreign-policy community are dismayed by political appointments to these top diplomatic postings. Some say the practice is simply out of date. “What we have is a new spoils system,” Ted Bromund of the Heritage Foundation wrote in 2013. The term was coined by Sen. William Marcy of New York in 1828, and derived from the phrase “to the victor belong the spoils.” And the practice is virtually unheard of in most other developed democracies, although Canada and Britain use political appointees to a lesser extent. The vast majority of foreign ambassadors posted to Washington are career diplomats, and most of those who are not are at the least former senior government officials.

When Obama headed to the White House in 2009, he pledged that he would “change the ways of Washington,” but he has stuck to tradition when it comes to ambassadors: The AFSA’s records suggest he almost exactly matched the 30-70 split between political appointees and career diplomats set by previous presidents. Trump has pledged to “drain the swamp,” but his policy on ambassadors remains in the making.

There is some good news for Ivana, though. There hasn’t been a career diplomat appointed as U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic since 1995. And she may get a warm welcome. “They could not send a better U.S. ambassador to Prague,” Czech President Milos Zeman told her in a statement last week, according to Zeman’s office.

[newstfionline]

Russian Diplomats Are Eating America’s Lunch

By James Bruno, Politico, April 16, 2014

Working the Afghanistan account at the State Department in the late 1980s, I occasionally met the Russian muckraking journalist Artyom Borovik. Before he joined the vanguard of those agitating for change during glasnost, he had served as a Soviet diplomat. The son of a Novosti journalist posted to New York, Borovik spoke nearly unaccented English and excellent Spanish. He was as comfortable in an Afghan tea house as he was at a Manhattan Starbucks. Borovik, in short, was the cream of the crop of Russian youth from which the Foreign Ministry traditionally recruits its diplomats: urbane, multilingual, with elite educations and the skills to deftly navigate foreign societies.

Borovik died in 2000 in a still-unsolved Moscow plane accident days after producing a scathing article about an ascendant Russian politician, Vladimir Putin, who was about to become president. Borovik quoted Putin in an article as saying, “There are three ways to influence people: blackmail, vodka, and the threat to kill.”

Whether or not Putin has expanded his tools of persuasion, he’s got good help in the influence department. In the lead-up to four-way talks over Ukraine and Secretary of State Kerry’s consultations with European leaders this week, Russian ambassadors are using their many close connections with continental elites to press Putin’s case, to seek to stifle or limit economic sanctions and to foster divisions between Washington and its allies. In most cases these Russian envoys have spent the bulk of their diplomatic careers dealing with the countries to which they are posted and have extensive decades-long contacts with whom they can speak, often in the latters’ native languages. This gives them a decided edge.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is fairly typical. A graduate of the prestigious Moscow Institute for International Relations (known by its Russian acronym, MGIMO) and 42-year Foreign Ministry veteran, Lavrov speaks fluent English as well as Sinhalese, Dhiveli and French. A former U.S. ambassador who had dealt with Lavrov at the United Nations described him to me as disciplined, witty and charming, a diplomat so skilled “he runs rings around us in the multilateral sphere.”

Russia has always taken diplomacy and its diplomats seriously. America, on the other hand, does not. Of this country’s 28 diplomatic missions in NATO capitals (of which 26 are either currently filled by an ambassador or have nominees waiting to be confirmed), 16 are, or will be, headed by political appointees; only one ambassador to a major NATO ally, Turkey, is a career diplomat. Fourteen ambassadors got their jobs in return for raising big money for President Obama’s election campaigns, or worked as his aides. A conservative estimate of personal and bundled donations by these fundraisers is $20 million (based on figures from the New York Times, Federal Election Commission and AllGov). The U.S. ambassador to Belgium, a former Microsoft executive, bundled more than $4.3 million.

By contrast, all but two of Moscow’s ambassadors to NATO capitals are career diplomats. And the two Russian equivalents of political appointees (in Latvia and Slovakia) have 6 and 17 years of diplomatic experience respectively. The total number of years of diplomatic experience of Russia’s 28 ambassadors to NATO nations is 960 years, averaging 34 years per incumbent. The cumulative years of relevant experience of America’s ambassadors are 331, averaging 12 years per individual. Russia has 26 NATO ambassadors with 20-plus years of diplomatic service; the United States has 10. Furthermore, 16 American envoys have five years, or fewer, of diplomatic service. The figure for Russia: zero. Five U.S. NATO posts currently have no ambassador. None of Russia’s is vacant. With Michael McFaul’s departure in February, there is no U.S. ambassador in Moscow at the moment.

Domestically, the situation is equally worrisome. Three-quarters of the top policy and management positions at the State Department currently are occupied by non-diplomats, mainly Democratic Party activists or liberal think tankers. “Most are competent, but must pass an ideological test to be appointed,” a former senior official who worked with Obama’s appointees at State told me. “These positions,” she added, “are handed out based on party connections and loyalty.” In the hands of these decision-makers, all major foreign policy issues are viewed through an “ideological prism as opposed to an eye toward the long-term interests of the United States,” she said. The White House’s National Security Council staff, furthermore, has ballooned from about four dozen three decades ago to more than twice that today, a shift that has had the effect of concentrating power in the White House, and infusing key decisions with political calculations.

By contrast, the Russian Foreign Ministry is staffed top to bottom with career diplomats.

So, just how much are we disadvantaged in the diplomatic game over Ukraine? Consider these three strategically situated countries.

Germany: Chancellor Angela Merkel is walking a political tightrope. On the one hand, she and the German public are as outraged over Moscow’s Crimea annexation as anyone. But Germany depends on Russia for a third of its energy needs, and when it comes to trade, the Germans sell almost as much to Russia as they buy, with 300,000 jobs dependent on German-Russian trade. Both sides have much to lose should major sanctions be imposed against Russia.

The Russian ambassador to Germany, Vladimir Grinin, who joined the diplomatic service in 1971, has served in Germany in multiple tours totaling 17 years, in addition to four years in Austria as ambassador. He is fluent in German and English. He has held a variety of posts in the Russian Foreign Ministry concentrating on European affairs. Berlin is his fourth ambassadorship.

The U.S. ambassador to Germany, John B. Emerson, has seven months of diplomatic service (since his arrival in Berlin) and speaks no German. A business and entertainment lawyer, Emerson has campaigned for Democrats ranging from Gary Hart to Bill Clinton. He bundled $2,961,800 for Barack Obama’s campaigns.

Norway: Norway rivals its Russian neighbor in gas exports to the European Union, supplying 20 percent (compared with 25 percent from Russia). Should Russia cut back gas exports to Europe by 20 percent, Norway could easily make up the difference. Oslo suspended all military cooperation with Moscow right after the latter’s incursion into Crimea. Tens of thousands of Russian troops have maneuvered closer to the Nordic and Baltic nations, leading the Norwegian defense minister to call for historically neutral Sweden and Finland to join NATO.

Vyacheslav Pavlovskiy has been Moscow’s envoy in Oslo since 2010. A MGIMO graduate and 36-year diplomatic veteran, he speaks three foreign languages.

President Obama’s nominee as ambassador to Norway, hotel magnate George Tsunis, bundled $988,550 for Obama’s 2012 campaign. He so botched his Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in February with displays of ignorance about the country to which he is to be posted that Norway’s media went ballistic and he became a laughingstock domestically. He is yet to be confirmed.

Hungary: Bordering Ukraine and reliant on Russia for 80 percent of its natural gas imports, Hungary has come out against sanctions against Russia. Domestically, a rise in anti-Semitism and extremism has accompanied a low-growth economy.

Russian envoy Alexander Tolkach, a 39-year Foreign Ministry veteran and MGIMO alumnus, is on his second ambassadorship; he speaks three foreign languages.

Colleen Bell, a producer of a popular TV soap opera with no professional foreign affairs background, snagged the nomination of U.S. ambassador to Hungary with $2,191,835 in bundled donations to President Obama. She stumbled nearly as badly as Tsunis before her Senate hearing with her incoherent, rambling responses to basic questions on U.S.-Hungarian relations. She also awaits Senate confirmation.

With the exception of the U.S. mission to NATO in Brussels, which is headed by a former army general, this talent imbalance is matched at the other European embassies headed by non-career ambassadors.

With so many dilettantes in charge of U.S. foreign policy at home and abroad, how can Washington hope to compete with a highly trained Russian diplomatic cadre?

“The Russians take a much longer-term view. They’ll wait us out, knowing the American people will eventually forget about Crimea,” said a former U.S. diplomat with years of service in Russia and its “near abroad.”

U.S. ambassadors lacking in knowledge of national security, statecraft and European politics as well as long established contacts in the host government are at a clear disadvantage. And those who won their positions through the exchange of cash or cronyism often earn little respect among Europeans, inventors of modern diplomacy. This is not to say that some highly talented non-career ambassadors cannot be effective in pressing Washington’s positions. By and large, however, they lack in innovative diplomacy and often miss opportunities, according to two former U.S. envoys who have worked with political appointees. And the hand-holding they require from their career staff limits what those professional diplomats can get done.

Russia’s diplomats have their own shortcomings. Rigidly trained in the mechanics of diplomacy, they tend to confine their contacts with the foreign ministries of the countries in which they are serving, neglecting to engage with a cross section of society as American diplomats are trained to do. Their bureaucratic culture “discourages innovation and risk-taking,” noted the diplomat who had served in Russia and former Soviet republics. “Our diplomacy has heart. Russian diplomacy has power,” she added. A former senior official who has dealt with Putin noted, “Russian diplomats are backward in social media and feel most comfortable in places like their own.”

Overall, though, we are outmatched diplomatically. Obama’s foreign policy apparatus is bloated at the White House level, over-politicized at the State Department and dismissive of the expertise to be gained from career diplomats, with decision-making tending toward groupthink in an echo chamber. And if the White House believes it can achieve its goals toward Moscow by sending TV soap opera producers, hoteliers and other campaign contributor neophytes to face veteran Russian diplomats in key European capitals, it is nothing short of delusional. At the very least, Obama risks stumbling in his pursuit of foreign policy goals in a situation where every mistake counts.

James Bruno is a retired Foreign Service officer, writer and blogger. His book, “The Foreign Circus: Why Foreign Policy Should Not Be Left in the Hands of Diplomats, Spooks and Political Hacks,” is now out.

[newstfionline]

Well-Trod Path: Political Donor to Ambassador

By Nicholas Confessore and Sheryl Gay Stolberg, NY Times, January 18, 2013 When President Obama hosted dozens of his top donors at the White House in late November for a celebratory post-election dinner of chicken and pumpkin pie, few in the room could claim to have done more to elect him than Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue magazine.

And after raising millions of dollars for Mr. Obama, Ms. Wintour had a prize in mind, according to several people close to the White House: appointment as ambassador to Britain, the United States' most prestigious diplomatic post.

But by the time Ms. Wintour returned home to New York, officials had told her the job in London would almost certainly go to someone who had done even more for Mr. Obama: Matthew Barzun, a genial former technology executive who spent 20 grueling months as finance chairman of the president's national fund-raising operation.

As Mr. Obama begins his second term in the White House, the donors and bundlers who raised more than a billion dollars to get him there are pressing hard for appointments. The sheer scale of Mr. Obama's fund-raising machine has led to an especially intense scramble for plum ambassadorships, with as many as 300 people vying for just 30 or so positions, according to several people involved in the process.

"The president now has six years of relationships, not two years," said Andy Spahn, a public relations and political consultant who, along with Jeffrey Katzenberg, the film producer, was Mr. Obama's top Los Angeles fund-raiser. "So I expect that it will be a lot more competitive this time around."

Interviews with more than a dozen donors, Democratic officials and advisers involved in the discussions revealed some unspoken rules: Volunteer for more than one country. Be prepared to serve for only two years, so that a second round of envoys can be appointed before Mr. Obama leaves office. Don't mention how much money you raised for the campaign (but don't expect much if you didn't raise at least a million dollars). Let it be known where you want to go, but don't publicly campaign for the job.

"You have to find the balance between waving the flag to get your name out there and waving the flag so much you smack people in the face with it," said Jonathan Prince, a former State Department official under Mr. Obama.

Mr. Obama has followed recent tradition in making appointments; like every president going back to Ronald Reagan, he has filled about 70 percent of the posts with career diplomats and 30 percent with political appointees, often but not always top donors. Dangerous spots like Yemen are invariably filled by diplomats, according to statistics compiled by the American Foreign Service Association. Highly sought European and Caribbean countries usually go to political appointees. At least three Obama fund-raisers are interested in Italy this time around, according to people familiar with the roster of potential candidates.

But Asian countries are increasingly desirable. Steve Westly, a California venture capitalist and top Obama fund-raiser, has discussed with administration officials the ambassadorship to China, among other jobs, according to people with knowledge of the talks. The post is currently filled by Gary Locke, the former commerce secretary, who may depart later this year.

Deep pockets are an unofficial requirement for many postings. While ambassadors currently earn a maximum base salary of $179,700, and housing is provided with the job, in some capitals they can expect to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on entertaining. So those who can "self-finance" have a competitive edge.

The expectation is so ingrained that Timothy J. Roemer, a former congressman, felt compelled to bring up his bank account when Mr. Obama named him ambassador to India. "I told the White House and the State Department early on, I can't afford to do the job like that," Mr. Roemer said.

Not everyone wants a gilded posting in a European capital. Ellen Susman, a Texas philanthropist who contributed $100,000 to the "super PAC" supporting Mr. Obama, has alerted people involved in the decision-making of her interest in serving as director of the State Department's Art in Embassies program, responsible for managing the art collection that hangs in American embassies around the world. (Ms. Susman declined to comment.) Others are more interested in policy positions within the State Department or elsewhere in Mr. Obama's administration.

"There are some people who just want to be an assistant secretary of state for Latin America or something," said Robert Rizzi, a partner in the Washington office of O'Melveny & Myers, one of several law firms that help clients navigate background checks for high-ranking jobs.

The sheer number of names in Mr. Obama's hat this year means that most will end up with nothing. Some will be offered a semi-desirable country that they are unlikely to accept, a move that allows Mr. Obama's team to satisfy their donors without actually hiring them.