A few months ago, I happened to be speaking with a man whom I knew several decades ago when I was a young investigator for the Senate Banking Committee. I grew up to be a journalist and editor. He grew up to run a hedge fund, and to become a leading Wall Street Democrat zillionaire. We still talk occasionally. He raised a lot of money for Joe Biden. “But Biden bundlers are not in line for ambassadorships,” he said wistfully. Biden is rebuilding the State Department after Trump’s carnage. And one of the ways he is doing it is to restore confidence among Foreign Service officers by appointing either career people or eminent people seriously knowledgeable about the country to key diplomatic
posts, rather than using ambassadorships as career-capper rewards to fundraisers. The other day, Biden named Amy Gutmann, a political philosopher who has been president of Penn since 2004, as his ambassador to Germany. She is also the daughter of Holocaust survivors. Several others who are career Foreign Service people have been named as ambassadors to smaller countries. You might say it’s a small thing, but it suggests Biden is serious about rebuilding government and restoring some integrity to the process of appointing ambassadors. The closest thing to a dubious patronage appointment is Morgan Stanley vice chair Tom Nides to the sensitive post of ambassador to Israel. (And it could have been worse—Nides was rumored to be in line for a key domestic job. Apparently Nides was promised he’d get
something.) And speaking of which, we’ve heard nothing further about Japan since the flurry of leaks in late May reporting with absolute certainty that Biden was naming Rahm Emanuel to that important post. Like other definite leaked jobs that Emanuel didn’t get, this one bore all the earmarks of the leaks coming from Emanuel himself. Let’s hope Biden remains resolute and names a serious Japan specialist to this important job. There is only one person close to Emanuel who could get Biden to take this insulting idea seriously, and that is Barack Obama. Biden owes Obama a lot. He doesn’t owe him this.
The e-cigarette company bought an entire issue of a scholarly journal, with all the articles written by authors on its payroll, to ‘prove’ that its product has a public benefit. BY DAVID DAYEN
Justice Amy Coney Barrett declined to recuse herself in a case involving a nonprofit that spent over $1 million getting her confirmed to the Supreme Court. BY STEVEN LUBET
