Gordon Sondland, poster child for what’s wrong with too many of America’s ambassadorships

If we’ve learned anything from the Trump administration since the 2016 election, we’ve learned that CEOs of hotel empires seem to lack the nuance and tact required for foreign affairs leadership. Trump has proven in almost every encounter with foreign dignitaries that he doesn’t have a clue how to comport himself when representing America before our friends and foes. America’s leadership profile has been seriously downgraded around the world with foreign leaders walking on eggshells in any encounter with the bombastic, unpredictable and wandering mind of the American president.

News of last week adds even more credible and weighty evidence to the proposition that hotel empires are not training grounds for presidents or diplomats who buy their way into ambassadorships.

This time it’s Gordon Sondland of Portland, whose company owns and operates boutique hotels across the nation. Sondland, whom Trump appointed ambassador to the European Union, has been all thumbs in navigating his way through the Ukrainian controversy that Trump created over his threats to withhold military aid to Ukraine if its president did not investigate the Bidens.

Sondland proves beyond a shadow of a doubt what disasters lie ahead when presidents choose ambassadors not for the diplomatic expertise but for their generosity to presidential campaigns and their party’s coffers.

After initial testimony in which he claimed he had no idea there was any precondition to the military aid Ukraine was requesting, he reversed course last week with an amazing and contradictory version of events he told the House Committee earlier. (As one observer noted, it’s about recalling that you don’t want to go to jail for perjury.)

Now he claims he had a conversation with the Ukrainian president’s chief negotiator, Andriy Yermak, in which he told Yermak that the resumption of U.S. aid “would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anti-corruption statement,” that is, no military aid until you turn your investigators on the Bidens. That squares with the testimony of what William B. Taylor, who serves as charge d’affaires at the U.S. embassy in Ukraine.

He heard Sondland say that if there was not an investigation of the Bidens, there would be “stalemate,” meaning Ukraine would not get U.S. military assistance.

Aside from the controversy swirling around President Trump, his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Sondland and others, how is it that ambassadors like Sondland with little or no experience or knowledge in foreign affairs find themselves representing the U.S. across the globe? The answer, of course, lies embedded in the long history of presidents handing out some ambassadorships to contributors and friends who often lack any qualifications for the country or assignment to be served. Sondland fits the mold perfectly.

In his remarks before the annual Frank Church Institute conference, former ambassador to Russia and political science professor at Stanford, Michael McFaul, touched on the recent increase in ambassador appointments who do not come from the diplomatic corps. McFaul acknowledged that even he was a political appointment of President Obama’s, but he doubted it had much to do with his $250 contribution to the Obama campaign and more to do with his lifelong expertise in Russian history and politics. That is not the way it works for an increasing number of U.S. ambassadors.

The American Academy of Diplomacy has documented how campaign contributions have opened up critical ambassador positions to appointees without the appropriate experience or credentials to be effective representatives of America in foreign capitals. Even below the rank of ambassador, there is a trend of more political appointees holding positions at the upper or mid-levels of the Department of State at the expense of foreign service professionals who bring field perspective in language and culture to foreign assignments that political appointees often lack.

Presidents before Trump are not blameless in appointing political cronies and contributors to ambassadorships. In fact, Ryan Scoville, a managing editor of the International Journal of International Law and professor of law at Marquette University, studied ambassador appointments over time and found that since the 1950s, presidents have consistently allocated roughly 30 percent of ambassadorial appointments to individuals who are not career diplomats. Under presidents George W. Bush and Obama, such appointments grew in number compared to presidents Clinton and George H.W. Bush.

Under Trump, this practice of appointing political appointees to ambassadorships turned into an art form, with his percentage of ambassadors without diplomatic experience increasing to 40%.

Scoville also found that since 1980, the average political nominee has been materially less qualified than the average career diplomat nominee, especially in the language skills of the country the appointee is assigned. Second, Scoville says things are getting worse, with larger sums of money determining who gets an ambassadorship and lesser qualified nominees securing such posts.

There is doubt among constitutional scholars as to whether Congress can require qualifications for ambassadors thanks to a Supreme Court decision more than 160 years old. But that should not stop Congress from exploring how it can skirt whatever obstacles stand in the way of statutory requirements for ambassadors.

As Gordon Sondland came close to perjuring himself last week and reversed course, I’ll bet he wishes there was a requirement that would have ruled him out for one of Trump’s ambassadorships. It’s time for America to send ambassadors to all corners of the earth with the appropriate experience, knowledge and ethical grounding to serve their country to their full potential.