Christopher Beam: The great American tradition of sending your political rivals overseas.
If all politics is local, one should never pass up a chance to send one's opponents to Asia.
That appears to be what President Obama has done by deciding to name Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman as his new ambassador to China....
The most famous example is the most similar. In 1963, President John F. Kennedy picked Henry Cabot Lodge to be his ambassador to South Vietnam. That would be like Barack Obama picking Sarah Palin as his Afghanistan liaison. Lodge had been Richard Nixon's running mate in 1960 and was known to harbor presidential ambitions for 1964. Like Huntsman, Lodge was qualified for the job: In addition to nearly three terms in the Senate, he had fought in World War II, served as ambassador to the United Nations, and escorted Nikita Kruschev on his U.S. tour in 1959. But by dispatching him for South Vietnam, JFK kept Lodge at a safe distance. (After Kennedy's assassination, Lodge came back and launched an unsuccessful run for the Republican nomination.)
Picking Lodge had another benefit: It helped Kennedy depoliticize the Vietnam War, which at that moment risked getting pegged as a Democratic effort. By co-opting one of the most prominent Republicans of his time, Kennedy turned the war into a bipartisan endeavor. (Nixon completed the process by doubling down.) Huntsman's appointment may have a similar effect. While U.S.-China relations are not particularly politicized right now, it will be helpful to Obama to have a well-known Republican associated with—and pushing for—his policies there.
But the master of keeping friends close and enemies overseas was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In 1938, he appointed one of his strongest Democratic rivals and critics, Joseph P. Kennedy, to be ambassador to England. While sabotage may not have been the intent, it was certainly the result: It was in that role that Kennedy in 1940 uttered his politically destructive observation: "Democracy is finished in England. It may be here."
A year later, Roosevelt gave the same job to John Gilbert Winant, a former state senator and governor from New Hampshire who was being mentioned as a potential presidential candidate. He remained in England from 1941-46.
Roosevelt's shrewdest move, though, was organizing the great global circumnavigation of Wendell Willkie. Willkie wasn't just a Republican opponent—he was the Republican opponent. He had won the party's nomination in 1940, only to lose to FDR. But he was still seen as a potential front-runner for 1944.
Which, of course, made him an excellent candidate to roam the globe as FDR's personal envoy....
Read entire article at Slate
That appears to be what President Obama has done by deciding to name Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman as his new ambassador to China....
The most famous example is the most similar. In 1963, President John F. Kennedy picked Henry Cabot Lodge to be his ambassador to South Vietnam. That would be like Barack Obama picking Sarah Palin as his Afghanistan liaison. Lodge had been Richard Nixon's running mate in 1960 and was known to harbor presidential ambitions for 1964. Like Huntsman, Lodge was qualified for the job: In addition to nearly three terms in the Senate, he had fought in World War II, served as ambassador to the United Nations, and escorted Nikita Kruschev on his U.S. tour in 1959. But by dispatching him for South Vietnam, JFK kept Lodge at a safe distance. (After Kennedy's assassination, Lodge came back and launched an unsuccessful run for the Republican nomination.)
Picking Lodge had another benefit: It helped Kennedy depoliticize the Vietnam War, which at that moment risked getting pegged as a Democratic effort. By co-opting one of the most prominent Republicans of his time, Kennedy turned the war into a bipartisan endeavor. (Nixon completed the process by doubling down.) Huntsman's appointment may have a similar effect. While U.S.-China relations are not particularly politicized right now, it will be helpful to Obama to have a well-known Republican associated with—and pushing for—his policies there.
But the master of keeping friends close and enemies overseas was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In 1938, he appointed one of his strongest Democratic rivals and critics, Joseph P. Kennedy, to be ambassador to England. While sabotage may not have been the intent, it was certainly the result: It was in that role that Kennedy in 1940 uttered his politically destructive observation: "Democracy is finished in England. It may be here."
A year later, Roosevelt gave the same job to John Gilbert Winant, a former state senator and governor from New Hampshire who was being mentioned as a potential presidential candidate. He remained in England from 1941-46.
Roosevelt's shrewdest move, though, was organizing the great global circumnavigation of Wendell Willkie. Willkie wasn't just a Republican opponent—he was the Republican opponent. He had won the party's nomination in 1940, only to lose to FDR. But he was still seen as a potential front-runner for 1944.
Which, of course, made him an excellent candidate to roam the globe as FDR's personal envoy....