United Nations ambassador nominee Kelly Knight Craft is smart, capable, and knowledgeable about the foreign policy challenges facing our country. Her partisan critics are unfairly attacking her lack of a traditional diplomatic background. Such a background is vastly overrated as a qualification for success at the U.N. The international body functions largely as a parliamentary system in which negotiation and communication skills predominate. Craft has what it takes to be very successful.

Perhaps the largest impediment to her success has nothing to do with her abilities or experience. It has to do with the impending removal of the U.N. ambassador position from membership in the president’s Cabinet and the National Security Council.