Axios‘ Harry Stevens has a fun new table concerning the characteristics of the ambassador corps of various recent Presidents:
Stevens makes the easy point:
Why it matters: The data undercuts Trump’s campaign claim that his personal fortune places him above the influence of donor cash — and shows how campaign contributions can help secure jobs for people with relatively weak diplomatic backgrounds.
But let’s take this a step further. This chart also shows that Trump only knows money as a metric. It’s not just that he loves it, mind you, but it’s really all he knows about measuring the competence of, well, anyone. It’s become the tie that binds him to his incompetence.
And it demonstrates the crass folly of believing excellence in business (if one chooses to believe that of Trump) translates to knowing anything about running government. For him, if you can afford to buy yourself an ambassadorship, well, that’s enough for him.
At least, apparently, Reagan, another conservative, understood the difference, or at least those who served under him did. Then again, he’d been governor of California, so he had some basis for understanding.
