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[misko27]

Plus sometimes they do good jobs. Caroline Kennedy didn't get the position due to a massive understanding the Japanese culture, but she's done well enough.

Also did you know Walter Mondale was ambassador to Japan? And Tim Foley? The more you know.

[mainiac]

Oh hey, speaking of exaggerating corruption in the State Department:  Remember that scandal about Clinton Foundation meetings?  I'm sure you do because everyone else does too.  A week ago, AP quietly deleted the tweet that started that "scandal".

Of course no one heard the retraction.  You can google Clinton foundation access scandal right now and you will still see the headlines that are based on a retracted story.  A retracted story in a goddamn tweet.

[Reelya]

With the ambassador thing it's clearly more complicated than that.

If you have ambassadors who are hostile to the current administration, then they aren't going to make good ambassadors. So it's natural common sense to appoint people who are political allies of the current administration. And one of the litmus tests of your allies is that they probably helped out a lot during the campaign, e.g. fund raising. I mean, are you going to appoint a guy to represent you who did fuck all for your campaign? Then there's the fact that there are over 200 countries which need to have an ambassador appointed. Clearly, you'll always find a smoking gun if you look for it.

[Strife26]

If he or she is the best choice to advance the interests of the United States of America, then fuck yeah I'm going to do exactly that.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

We can't even agree on what our interests are. A good two-thirds of this country has a third in mind they'd like to push into the sea. Diplomats also have a different set of inherent priorities that directy pertains to their personal political views when compared to other unelected positions. As long as they have plenipotentency, and they have to have that, you need them to be utter loyalists not just to the USA but also the current administration.

When the defense minister of Switzerland or wherever else the fuck comes barging into the embassy demanding redress because some birds formed into the image of an American predator drone on a radar screen you can't always just call in for instructions. You need someone who is both competent at diplomacy but also preeminently concerned with covering the ass of the executive branch, or at least so on the days where they've run down the literal coke and hookers budget for the month.

Otherwise, you end up with conflicts of interest between the good of the administration and the good of the United States as a whole. Sacrificing the former for the latter I think is a bad idea for a few reasons, but even if it's a good idea it still injects dysfunctionality into the whole method of the executive branch because Presidents will feel they can't trust the diplomats. The only even partial solution to that is to someone who is genuinely convinced of those two priorities as synonymous and inseparable, or in other words, a total glassy-eyed loyalist.

[mainiac]

The only even partial solution to that is to someone who is genuinely convinced of those two priorities as synonymous and inseparable, or in other words, a total glassy-eyed loyalist.

Just give me the job to avoid the scandal of giving it to a bundler.

[Max™]

The only even partial solution to that is to someone who is genuinely convinced of those two priorities as synonymous and inseparable, or in other words, a total glassy-eyed loyalist.

Just give me the job to avoid the scandal of giving it to a bundler.

You bungled "bungler", well played.

[Sheb]

While its true that you need loyalists, you also need decent diplomats. For some of them, it seems loyalty and cash have trumped skills.

[Folly]

The thing I find most annoying about having two universally disliked candidates, is how any time they or their representatives are asked any sort of question, they completely disregard the question and instead respond with an unrelated insult of the opposing party. That's just bad manners.

Also, so many of these people have a habit of starting a sentence, then right in the middle of it changing to a completely different tangent. I honestly wish that CNN would hire a Grammar Nazi to host interviews who would call people out every time they fail to finish their original thought.

[Starver]

Is that a Grammar Nazi's field of battle expertise? Maybe if they mismatch their subject/objects... (And the run-on, hyperparenenthesised, mismatched and often wildly verbifying freeform-constructs from YouKnowWho would be a goldmine.)

Having subjected myself to Trump's speeches (and Hillary's, and the others when they still 'mattered' but, of all those, his are the bigger chore, by far), purely in the interests of knowing "what is going on", I am convinced that semi-live fact-checking would he useful, if impractical.

Even better if there was some way of putting up someone like a live-signer/interpreter beside (and perhaps slightly behind) them on the dais who could solely provide instantaneous PolitiFact-like assessments. Call it an assistance to the Hard-Of-Judgement. But it'd be a hard job. And that's without the threat of lynching at a certain political rallies (definitely his¹...), but a superimposed corner-of-the-screen position is even more prone to Appeal To (Media) Conspiracy, by those who would wish to state as such. (Needs a special hard-coded "That's their opinion, I am obliged to make no comment" signing reaction, perhaps.)


But I dislike the rally situations. I'd ignore them altogether if they weren't apparently part of the process. Proper adversarial question-and-answer sezsions with (or at least in the presence of) those not similarly polarised are what I'd prefer. And it is there where filler-phrases and diversions get most overused. In the UK, there's an annoying tendency to go with something like "And what I would say to you(, members of the audience, etc) is..." that doubles up as weasel-wording² but is also a fairly standard phrase useful for rolling out on automatic whilst the brain tries to mince the real meat of the answer into a pallatable form.

It used to be that "You ask <foo>, but the real question is <bar>, and my answer to that is...", here in the UK at least, but interviewers/chairpersons have become good at calling that out. Haven't seen a good Candidate vs. Candidate debate from the US recently, though, to compare with.

I actually don't mind the fact that live speaking transcripts wouldn't anywhere near pass muster if trying to submit them as a written response, and I can probably forgive minor thinkos in their content as well as ramble (no stranger to that, myself) but fiction-as-fact should be discouraged. Especially as not everybody is at all bothered at paying attention to rivalling echochambers and may well take home some pretty dire things as Gospel.


¹ Free Speech is Free Speech, but the baying for blood at such *ahem* loaded phrases as "And the Police would be very happy about that", is the kind of worrying disregard for law and due process that is being spun. Playing the home crowd, like each candidate in their own partisanly-attended speeches, sure, but President Duterte probably wouldn't have the same mismatch of views with President Trump as with Obama if he continues that way into office, and through it.

² What they would say to you, perhaps, with a caveat tacked on to make it look they didn't actually just say the thing you thought they just said if it ever becomes politically inconvenient to have done so, and to have been recorded doing so.

[mainiac]

they completely disregard the question and instead respond with an unrelated insult of the opposing party. That's just bad manners.

Well y'know what happens when they dont?  No one gives a shit:

I was entertained by this comparison: http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/09/donald-trump-announces-something-press-goes-wild
In a nutshell: Trump farts out a half baked plan, front page news.  Clinton has had a detailed plan on the topic since before her candidacy announcement, no one knows.

I could say it's the media's fault but really I say fuck the voters.  People bitch and moan that politics is becoming full of smears and insults.  Well tens of millions of voters are voting for a literal reality TV star. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Even better if there was some way of putting up someone like a live-signer/interpreter beside (and perhaps slightly behind) them on the dais who could solely provide instantaneous PolitiFact-like assessments.

Why not just skip the voters entirely and have a council of technocrats pick the president?  If they can judge the objective truth on behalf of people they are basically picking the winner anyway.

[RedKing]

Why not just skip the voters entirely and have a council of technocrats pick the president?  If they can judge the objective truth on behalf of people they are basically picking the winner anyway.

I am not entirely averse to this approach. John Adams wanted to have a third chamber of Congress composed of intelligentsia and "learned men", as a safeguard against uninformed demagoguery. And with damn good reason, it appears.

[Strife26]

Why not just skip the voters entirely and have a council of technocrats pick the president?  If they can judge the objective truth on behalf of people they are basically picking the winner anyway.

I am not entirely averse to this approach. John Adams wanted to have a third chamber of Congress composed of intelligentsia and "learned men", as a safeguard against uninformed demagoguery. And with damn good reason, it appears.

Have you looked at Academia lately? It's just as Kafka-esque as anywhere else.

[mainiac]

I am not entirely averse to this approach. John Adams wanted to have a third chamber of Congress composed of intelligentsia and "learned men", as a safeguard against uninformed demagoguery. And with damn good reason, it appears.

If memory serves, you hated "the establishment" for being in the tank for Hillary.  You wanted DWS fired, no?  The "establishment" mostly consists of lifelong democratic politicians, lifelong advocates and high ranking organizers of democratic party politics.  The establishment could thus reasonably be considered a caucus of experts.

So you hated a group of appointed experts when they ran a political party.  And they didn't even unilaterally decide the result, the rank and file democratic voters by far had the most sway.  But that was an unacceptable degree of control over a political party, something people can voluntarily disassociate from at any time to go make their own party with blackjack and abolitionists.

And now you are talking about the same thing but in the actual government itself.

[RedKing]

I am not entirely averse to this approach. John Adams wanted to have a third chamber of Congress composed of intelligentsia and "learned men", as a safeguard against uninformed demagoguery. And with damn good reason, it appears.

If memory serves, you hated "the establishment" for being in the tank for Hillary.  You wanted DWS fired, no?  The "establishment" mostly consists of lifelong democratic politicians, lifelong advocates and high ranking organizers of democratic party politics.  The establishment could thus reasonably be considered a caucus of experts.

So you hated a group of appointed experts when they ran a political party.  And they didn't even unilaterally decide the result, the rank and file democratic voters by far had the most sway.  But that was an unacceptable degree of control over a political party, something people can voluntarily disassociate from at any time to go make their own party with blackjack and abolitionists.

And now you are talking about the same thing but in the actual government itself.

There's a big difference between scientific expertise and political expertise. What Adams was talking about was a collection of scientists, philosophers, etc.
What you're talking about is party machinery -- people whose expertise revolves around "how to win elections". Which, given that it's the Democrats, they're not even that good at.

I would be okay abrogating my right to choose the President if I thought the choice was being handled by a group of intelligent people. Neither the DNC nor the American populace fits that description.