President-elect Barack Obama said Friday that while he aims to grow a bigger crop of career diplomats, he will not abandon the practice of filling some ambassadorial posts with political appointees.
The Democrat who has vowed to change the way business is done in Washington told a news conference that his "general inclination" is to have career foreign service people in those posts "wherever possible."
But Obama also said that it would be "disingenuous" for him to suggest that he won't be putting some political appointees in embassies. He said he has not yet thought through the full list of possible appointments he'll be making after Inauguration Day, focusing instead on the most critical embassy posts like Baghdad.
He praised the current American ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, as "one of the unsung heroes" of the big turnaround in security in Iraq over the past year; he mentioned no candidate to replace Crocker, who has said he intends to retire from government at the end of the Bush administration.
Currently, about one-third of U.S. ambassadors are political appointees. That is about in line with historic norms. Obama made no mention of whether he intends to stick to that norm or aims to lower it.
Obama also said he has spoken to his designated secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, about his hope to revitalize the State Department and its diplomatic corps.
"I want to recruit young people into the State Department to feel that this is a career track that they can be on for the long term," Obama said. "And so, you know, my expectation is that high quality civil servants are going to be rewarded. You know, are there going to be political appointees to ambassadorships? There probably will be some."
Prominent former career diplomats have publicly urged Obama to pay close attention to the qualifications of those he nominates as ambassadors, while accepting the value of having some non-career ambassadors.
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