Tag Archives: Teel Bivins

International news, local news, political news

Politics determines ambassador picks

CNN White House reporter Jim Acosta wanted to know whether a campaign “bundler” for President Obama is the best person to represent the United States at its embassy in Paris.

Well, what difference does it make? Ambassadorships are political prizes. Always have been. Republican presidents dole out these gifts and so do Democratic presidents.

Acosta’s question came while wondering whether U.S. Ambassador to France Jane Hartley questioned the White House about the “optics” that might occur if we didn’t send a high-ranking emissary to the unity rally.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/01/13/cnns_acosta_asks_earnest_about_campaign_bundler_ambassador_to_france_is_she_the_best_weve_got.html

Then came the query about Hartley’s role as someone who gathered up campaign cash from contributors to the Obama campaign; she and her husband had hosted a high-dollar campaign dinner at their New York home for conributors, which apparently earned her an ambassadorial appointment to Paris.

With few exceptions, ambassadorships go to political allies and those who have contributed tangibly to the winning presidential candidate’s political effort.

Take the time George W. Bush appointed the late Teel Bivins to be our ambassador to Sweden. Was the state senator from Amarillo an expert on Sweden? Did he have keen insight into the geopolitical relationship between the nations? No on both counts.

He was a longtime friend of the Bush family and he worked tirelessly to get President Bush elected in 2000.

Thus, he got himself a ticket to Stockholm.

I wish it weren’t that way. Jane Hartley is no different than the vast majority of ambassadors representing this country at overseas posts.

This issue, though, does make me wonder: What does someone have to do to get an ambassadorial appointment to a hellhole of a country?

 

local news, State news

Thrill will be gone soon from Texas Senate

Texas lawmakers of both political parties have told me over the years how much “fun” they had serving in the state Legislature. Both chambers comprised members who had pals on the other side.

They were chums. They shared an adult beverage after hours. They would talk about common interests. They would seek each other’s advice.

I remember meeting the late state Sen. Teel Bivins for the first time. The Republican knew I came to Amarillo from Beaumont and he shared in our first meeting his respect for a Democratic adversary from Southeast Texas, Sen. Carl Parker, who used to refer to Bivins and others of his stripe as “silk-stocking Republicans.” Bivins never took it personally and he actually admired Parker’s debating skill, which he would employ on the floor of the Senate.

My trick knee is telling me those days are about to end.

Dan Patrick will become the next lieutenant governor in January. Patrick has made it known his desire to abandon a couple of Senate traditions: one is the two-thirds rule that requires 21 Senate votes to bring any bill to a vote of the entire of body; the other is the practice of appointing senators of the other party as committee chairs.

Patrick, a Republican, said earlier this year that given Texas’s strong conservative leaning and the fact that Republicans stand like a colossus over the landscape, then — by golly — he would prefer to have an all-GOP lineup among the Senate leadership.

Crank up the steamroller, folks.

What does this mean for what’s left of the party’s more moderate element, which must include Sen. Kel Seliger of Amarillo, who wants to lead the Education Committee?

A friend of mine and I were talking Friday about the next Legislature. He’s been observing Texas politics for decades and he wonders how the state will function when it is run by the TEA party wing of the GOP. He mentioned former Lt. Gov. Bill Ratliff, a wise man and moderate Republican, and lamented that Ratliff no longer is in public life. “Who would have thought that Kel Seliger would be considered a ‘liberal’ within the Republican Party?” he asked … rhetorically.

There once was a time when serving in the Legislature could be considered “fun.” Hey, it doesn’t pay very much so you look for fun whenever and wherever you can find it.

The tone and tenor of the upper chamber is about to change. For my taste — and perhaps the taste of others around the state — it won’t be for the better.

 

 

Uncategorized

Envoy posts: political payoffs

It’s not exactly a dirty little secret, as many folks know this already … but ambassadorial appointments are more likely than not going to individuals who’ve helped presidents get elected or re-elected.

You can be sure as shootin’ on this one: President Obama’s appointment of Jane Hartley as the next U.S. ambassador to France is going to bring out the critics who’ll say they’re simply “shocked, shocked!” that the president would pick someone who so darn political.

Another Obama bundler named ambassador

That’s been the custom since the beginning of the Republic.

Hartley is a well-known “bundler” who helped the president win re-election in 2012. Bundlers are those who go around collecting large sums of money from various interest groups and then contribute that money to whatever political cause or candidate they support.

I have no clue whether she’s an expert on France or whether she even knows anything about The Bastille. She is yet another in a long line of ambassadorial appointments that fall into this category of so-called “political hack.”

The vast majority of the complaints will come, of course, from Republicans.

I shouldn’t have to remind our friends in the GOP — but I will anyway — that presidents from their party do the same thing. I’ll cite one example quite close to home.

The late Teel Bivins of Amarillo served in the Texas Senate for 15 years before President George W. Bush tapped him to become U.S. ambassador to Sweden. Did Bivins get the nod because he was an expert on preparing pickled herring? Oh no. He got it because of his own campaign grunt work raising money and speaking on behalf of President Bush during the 2000 campaign.

One of Bivins’s top Senate aides actually told me at the time the president was rewarding the senator for “15 years of service to Texas.” Sure thing.

Well, Teel Bivins’s service to Texas wasn’t the reason he was sent to Stockholm. Hartley’s service won’t matter when Hartley jets off — once the U.S. Senate confirms her — to take her post in Paris. It hardly ever is the case whenever presidents make these appointments.

These folks are rewarded for their “service,” all right. It’s all politics.

Uncategorized

Kennedy is qualified to be envoy

The chattering class is yammering over whether Caroline Kennedy is qualified to become the next U.S. ambassador to Japan.

She’s never held elected office, or run a big public agency, or managed a political campaign, or been schooled in the details of U.S. diplomacy. That’s what they’re saying.

I’ll reiterate yet again that Kennedy is qualified by virtue of the criteria presidents of both parties set for these high-profile ambassadorial assignments. She’s a big supporter of the man who occupies the White House and that’s good enough.

Allow me this comparison: Teel Bivins’s appointment to be U.S. ambassador to Sweden.

What qualified the late Amarillo state senator? Well, he was a big fundraiser for President George W. Bush. He campaigned diligently for the then-Texas governor when he was running for president in 2000. Bivins held exactly one elected office, that of state senator, before being tapped in 2003 to present his credentials to the Swedish government in Stockholm.

By all accounts, Bivins did a fine job representing U.S. interests in the Baltic region of Europe. How did he do that? He was surrounded by a competent staff of career foreign service officers who taught everything he needed to know about Sweden, not to mention about diplomatic protocol.

I’ll concede that Sweden isn’t nearly the economic powerhouse that Japan has become. Still, Sweden is no Third World backwater. It has a vibrant automobile industry and it manufactures fighter jets that are sold to many nations around the world. It is one of he world’s most socialized countries. It taxes its citizens heavily to pay for things like medical care.

That was the environment into which Teel Bivins, a staunch conservative Texas Republican lawmaker was thrown.

He did just fine.

Kennedy has access to even more expertise than Bivins ever had. She’s a well-educated lawyer who comes from the nation’s premier political families. She could be a quick study on the complexities of Japan’s economy, its geopolitical importance and its key role in keeping the peace in east Asia.

I don’t doubt for a minute that she’s qualified.