Point taken, but I believe when Obama did it, there was already someone appointed to take the outgoing ambassadors place immediately (at least, here, it was the case).

A changing of the guard in these roles is (as the article I posted pointed out) the norm.

However, In the current case, no one knows who the replacement is, or when he/she will be taking on the role, thus leaving us officially without an ambassador for the foreseeable future, and also resulting in the longest gap in 70 odd years that we have not had an official ambassador.

It's pro forma for the ambassadors from the outgoing administration to proffer their resignation effective noon on Inauguration Day. The incoming president then says, no, no, please stay on until we have your replacement set up.

A transition team who knows these things would have done that - the Trump team, though, since he was not actually expecting a transition, had no idea how to run one. And accepted all the resignations.

This is the same reason the commander of the D.C. National Guard was dismissed at noon on the same day.

Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.

  The incoming president then says, no, no, please stay on until we have your replacement set up.

... which constitutes a rejection of the resignation. Later, when a replacement is confirmed, what happens if the offer to resign is not repeated? Do ambassadors get normal Civil Service protections?

Amassadors serve at the pleasure of the president, he can fire them at will.

"Which is more culpable: stupidity or malice?"

I wish current events didn't leave us needing to answer that question. I don't have a ready answer.

I don't think it actually matters in the short run. Career FSOs do the actual work in embassies, which is why you see big campaign donors and mid-level party hacks appointed as ambassadors to all but the most powerful countries.

> Point taken, but I believe when Obama did it, there was already someone appointed to take the outgoing ambassadors place immediately (at least, here, it was the case).

Unless I'm misremembering, that wasn't the case. Obama was appointing ambassadors regularly for a few months.

Not an appointee, but it's worth noting that there is a deputy chief of mission at every diplomatic post. This person is always a career diplomat with extensive experience, and is in place for precisely this reason. To take over and run the mission until a politically appointed ambassador is present.

> The existing social media managers are openly hostile to the new boss, with irrelevant-to-their-organization tweets going out about the inauguration crowd-size?

But wasn't it the Parks agency that tweeted about the crowd size, not the EPA?

And is the current administration simply going to shut down or fire everyone who shows any form of push back towards the regime? Isn't that what they do in places like, oh say, North Korea?

If you're an employee of the government, working to publicly undermine the policies of the person elected to lead your branch of government doesn't seem like a good way to keep your job.

I can't think of many instances where Executive Branch employees used official outlets to undermine a sitting President's policies in the past. Can you?

I guess in North Korea they would not get away with just getting fired.

"To your latter point regarding the fired ambassadors, it's the most scandalous thing since 2008, when Obama did the exact same thing"

Don't all new presidents appoint a fresh new batch of ambassadors ? I assumed it was always done that way ...

Are there cases of cross-presidency ambassadors ?

Yes. Where a new admin hasnt lined up a new ambassador, normal practice is to have the old one continue until the replacement is worked out. This admin, for whatever reasons, is months behind the normal schedual. A list of names should have already have been circulated on the hill so that they could be vetted and agreed upon asap. To leave such a post unfilled breaks diplomatic protocols and can be taken as a slight.

   This admin, for whatever reasons, is months behind the normal schedual.

This admin must really suck to be "months behind" after 5 days.

Please describe your process for properly vetting, nominating, debating, and confirming all (or most) ambassadorships in 4+ days, since you see that as "normal practice". Extra credit: name any three administrations that have done so.

I would hope that the Secretary of State would have some say in ambassadorships, in which case the process would also be constrained until the SecState nominee is confirmed.

The administration shouldn't have had every post already filled. What is unusual here is that an incoming administration usually asks the current ambassador to stay until a replacement is appointed.

The Trump team immediately accepted all the ambassadors resignations, which is what is unusual.

He was elected months ago. Even so, responsible campaigns start working this stuff out even before the election. Teambuilding should not be left until the last minute.

Who gives a shit? Do ambassadors actually DO anything?

1. The National Park Service hosted the event. Seems like it would make sense to post public information about the crowd size when there was a lot of public debate and misinformation about it. I understand your frustration thinking they would always look out for the president's best interest, but this was a pretty clear fact they were posting, not some kind of political opinion.

2. December 3, 2008. That's when that article was published about giving notice and starting to find replacements. Same as every other president does.

3. Serious question. Are you paid to do what you are doing right now? I have a really hard time understanding why you would post that link which is specifically framed to spread misinformation as it is about a completely different point in the presidency. Seriously, this is your country. Why would you intentionally attempt to misinform your fellow citizens?

EDIT: I expect a response. You said Obama did the "exact same thing". Which is an outright falsehood and posted an link that is from a different period to intentionally misinform people. In some countries what you just did would be considered a crime.

(Non-US citizen. Very Anti-Trump. Unpaid poster. Unhappy I need to state all this.)

To my surprise, jquery is pretty much correct about it being the same thing as Obama did. This[1] is the best summary of the situation I can find:

1) Obama (and all new incoming presidents before him) did ask for the resignations of all non-career, politically appointed ambassadors.

2) Obama (and Bush) did grant extensions to some ambassadors. However, this was a (very) small number. Exactly how many it applied to is unclear, but to quote the the article I linked above:

in the past two inter-party transitions (Clinton-Bush, Bush-Obama) only about 10 political ambassadors have gotten extensions.

Basically, I'd judge that the reporting of The Independent article linked above is misleadingly critical of Trump.

I also think that jquery's point below about Obama literally auctioned off the posts is incomplete. Most ambassadorships are given as rewards (by both US parties). Most countries do the same: ambassadorships to friendly countries are political rewards and the countries actually want someone who is close to the leader of the country they represent. I don't think the moral case against that is entirely clear, but I can see arguments both ways.

[1] https://diplopundit.net/2017/01/06/foreign-service-tradition...

You're right, Obama didn't do the "exact same thing." He literally auctioned off the posts, giving the ambassadorships to campaign contributors and bundlers ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-ambassador-nom... ). It's easy to find replacements if you don't care about qualifications and just reward your donor list, I guess. One of the ambassadors was so bad, staffers working for her requested transfers to Iraq and Afghanistan - http://www.politico.com/story/2011/02/report-rips-us-envoy-w...

So, yes, some posts may be left without an immediate replacement, but it's not cause for panic if the alternative is immediately filling the posts with unqualified campaign donors.

EDIT: These are undisputed facts in response to a hostile question accusing me of being a paid actor (ridiculous, my account is 8 years old) posting things that would be a "crime" in other countries. People down-voting this should check the irony considering they're upset at the President for censorship.

You were incorrect and you admitted it, which is good, but then you immediately move the goalposts and then use that to pretend that you were justified in your original assertation.

That's a shady rhetorical technique, and I suspect you're arguing in bad faith. That's worth some downvotes.

Wait, were they incorrect?

My interpretation was that GP meant that Obama did the same thing (firing existing politically appointed ambassadors) and then in addition filled the positions with people who had donated to his campaign (hence not the "exact same thing", but worse).

I really don't know the facts here, but my cursory reading of the Wapo article does seem to suggest that Obama did essentially the same thing in 2008. Or am I missing something?

> You were incorrect and you admitted it, which is good

Ironically, you are incorrect and have strangely doubled down on it in some sort of pyrrhic victory dance of failure.

badsock has posted exactly once in this entire thread.

Give your fellow HNers the benefit of the doubt.

It surprised me too. I thought he was the original poster, but the original commenter was 'jquery'.

My understanding was that the problem wasn't their termination, which every president does, but the fact that he denied them any sorts of extensions. Am I incorrect? See this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/05/us/politics/trump-ambassa...

Ambassadorships for campaign contributors! Goodness, the base corruption of such a President!

Good thing Mr. Trump would never do that kind of thing, like with the Department of Education or something.

It is corruption if a president lets campaign contributions influence their choice of appointees to political positions. Whether or not Obama did that is another discussion, but just because Trump will do the same, we should not hold any other president to a lesser standard.

Then you agree that Donald Trump is corrupt?

I actually edited out a long addendum to my comment above shortly after posting it. I guess I should have kept it because it addressed what I felt was the implicit assumption of the comment I replied to, and the less subtle assumption of your comment -- that because someone is criticizing a Democrat that they must be a Republican or Trump supporter. While statistically that may even be likely, you should withhold judgment at least until that person says something false or frames the discussion in a biased way.

I can't tell you how many times both online and in real life that people have made that assumption about me when I've criticized Obama, Clinton or other Democrats, or vice-versa when I've criticized Trump. I can assure you that I detest Donald Trump too.

Ah. Point taken, then (I did apparently need this addendum, ha). I did make this sloppy assumption.

I do have a significant D bias. Obama was by no means a perfect president - I mean, my God, I have a long list - but Trump, as far as I can see, doesn't even know what "President" means. There are loads of Republicans who I think would have done a fine job. I liked Romney, I think Kasich would have done OK, etc.

That said, an ambassadorship is normally given as a sop, isn't it? It doesn't alarm me in the slightest that Obama may have "literally auctioned off" ambassadorships - because I don't see the harm done and, as I say, I was under the impression that this was business as usual.

But you have to see that calling out possible corruption in the Obama administration (which, as I said, doesn't appear to have harmed us in any way that I know of) in the present context is ... well, it looks like carrying water for what appears to be shaping up to be quite literally the most corrupt administration America has ever suffered.

You did not answer my question. I expect an answer.

Why would you intentionally attempt to misinform your fellow citizens?

Honestly as a bystander to this conversation it seems like an easy enough mistake to make. The presidents did the same thing but at different times... Doesn't seem like a big deal. Doesn't nearly seem like enough evidence for "intentional attempt to misinform."

As someone who may be influenced by this discussion I am way more interested in why you think his point about nominating donors is not significant enough to discuss. Isn't that a sort of misinformation by non-acknowledgment?

Making negative assumptions about the intentions of the poster is not conducive to civil discourse.

Your expectations aren't compelling on anyone else.

Except that they stopped giving estimates over 20 years ago:

"For decades, the National Park Service provided official crowd estimates for gatherings on the National Mall but no longer does.

The policy changed after the Million Man March in 1995, a gathering of black men meant to show renewed commitment to family and solidarity. The park service estimated 400,000 people attended the march, making it one of the largest demonstrations in history in Washington.

But organizers believed they reached their goal of 1 million participants and threatened legal action. No lawsuit was filed, but the dispute was enough to get the park service out of the head-counting business."

Ref: http://www.denverpost.com/2017/01/21/national-park-service-t...

Except they didn't give an estimate. They posted a comparison photo.

I wonder if we've had mobile phone saturation long enough that they could measure attendance just by looking at cellular data.

At the Boston march, networks couldn't handle load - it was the first time I haven't had network access for hours in years. Maybe this wouldn't preclude the network registering my phone's requests (and our phones were reporting signal bars) but it's to be considered that our cellular infrastructure isn't built to handle massive protests at this scale.

> At the Boston march, networks couldn't handle load

Sounds like the Boston police department needs to order more Stingrays!

:(

>In some countries what you just did would be considered a crime.

I, for one, am happy that I live in a country where I don't have to worry about being prosecuted for making HN comments.

I bet those EPA employees are feeling very differently right now.

>3. Serious question. Are you paid to do what you are doing right now?

Can we please not do this here?

It is absolutely reasonable to question good faith on the internet. SPAM, bots, and paid shills have been here almost from day 1. The entirety of web2.0 was jumpstarted by services creating fake accounts to create the illusion of an already existing community.

It is a very interesting question how to fight this fact, and we need to discuss it, not silence any discussion of it.

  Are you paid to do what you are doing right now?

This is beyond the pale. Next comes Godwin?

Unless you have evidence of jquery's having been paid to post this, please don't make the accusation.

The number of true believers in various viewpoints, willing to lie in order to sway the audience vastly overwhelms the amount any organization's payroll could handle.

jquery, as many conservative and liberal commenters before him, believes that a lie to persuade someone for his noble cause is justified by its outcome. I disagree with this tactic vehemently, but it is used by many earnest believers.

Parent asked a question; it's not really an accusation.

I used to be on board and would have defended the mindset that asking the question is an accusation in and of itself. But now, over in /r/france, we have this stuff going on:

https://www.reddit.com/r/france/comments/5pv83r/inside_the_p...

At this point, I think it's sometimes fair to ask that question. There is no doubt that HN does have paid shills; if you turn showdead on, you'll often see some of the more egregious ones. The question is about the subtle ones.

Of course, that's what the current administration wants: For nobody to be certain of anything. Nerdwriter made an excellent video about it a couple of weeks ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geEVwslL-YY

Hm. When was the last time a government wanted its citizens not to be sure of what's true, what's false and each others' affiliations...

Your post is in gray. Even though I believe the last two sentences in your post justify a downvote, I gave you an upvote because the first two sentences are absolutely true and provide important perspective in this discussion.