Senate poised to approve big Obama donors as ambassadors

The Senate on straight party lines Monday evening agreed to shut down debate and proceed to a final vote on the nominations of Colleen Bell, the soap-opera producer who created “The Bold and the Beautiful,” to represent the U.S. in Hungary, and Noah Mamet, a longtime Democratic operative, to serve in Argentina.

Each raised at least $500,000 for Obama’s 2012 re-election and have little to no overseas experience. Their nominations have attracted heavy criticism from Republicans, as well as career diplomats, throughout the year.

If Democrats have any chance of getting both nominations cleared before January, they must do so in the lame duck session, while new rules they established requiring only a straight majority vote to overcome procedural hurdles still apply.

Republicans are weighing whether to overturn those rules when they move into the majority next year.

Earlier this year, the American Foreign Service Association, the union group for career diplomats, harshly criticized Obama’s appointments of a trio of campaign bundlers to key ambassadorships, including Bell and Mamet.

In a rare move, the group filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain the trio’s certificates of demonstrated competence, which all ambassador picks must submit to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to review before their nomination hearings.

The State Department produced the certificates only after AFSA threatened to sue, causing a media dust-up.

The association rarely takes issue with ambassador nominations, recognizing that previous modern presidents usually follow a 30-to-70 ratio of donors to career diplomats in their selections.

The group, however, expressed concern that nearly half of Obama’s second-term choices have been non-career diplomats.

In recent weeks, however, as the Senate has confirmed a host other ambassadors, AFSA has softened its stance.

“AFSA has been very pleased with the work that the Senate has done on the last few weeks, coming together to confirm the backlog of career foreign service officers nominated to ambassadorial positions,” AFSA spokeswoman Kristen Fernekes told the Washington Examiner Monday evening. “We are continuing to watch the Senate and [Senate Foreign Relations Committee] closely.”

Just before the Senate recessed for Thanksgiving break, it confirmed six ambassador nominations, along with several other senior federal government and judicial nominations.

Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is pushing through as many presidential nominations as possible in the lame duck before Republicans have a chance to grind the nominations process to a halt when they take the majority in January.

AFSA’s silence on Bell and Mamet didn’t stop Republicans from pointing out the pair’s lack of qualifications.

The Republican National Committee created a website titled “Obama’s Bundle of Trouble,” which blasted their selection and ridiculed the president for seemingly picking them only to reward them for scooping up campaign cash.

A spokesman for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who has also harshly criticized Obama’s choices and grilled them during their confirmation hearings, said he is planning to give a speech on the Senate floor Tuesday morning on Democrats’ decision to stick with the pair and push them through in the lame duck.

The decades-long debate over the practice of naming big-money donors to represent the U.S. overseas flared up again earlier this year when Bell, Mamet and a third ambassadorial pick flubbed basic political facts about the countries they were picked to serve during their confirmation hearings.

Obama appears to have given up on one of them: hotel magnate George Tsunis, his choice to represent the U.S. in Norway.

In grilling Tsunis earlier this year, McCain pointed out that Tsunis had offered a generous assessment of the country’s president even though it didn’t have one. Norway is a constitutional monarchy, McCain chided.

Bell stammered and ended up failing to produce an answer when asked to identify U.S. strategic interests in Hungary, the central European country that shares a border with Ukraine.

And Mamet testified that he has traveled extensively in his life — but not to Argentina.

In addition to AFSA’s objections, 15 former AFSA presidents wrote a letter to top senators on Capitol Hill, urging them not to confirm the nominees for Norway, Argentina and Hungary.

“The fact that they appear to have been chosen on the basis of their service in raising money for electoral campaigns, with minimal demonstrated qualifications for their posts, has subjected them to widespread public ridicule, not only in the U.S. but also abroad,” they wrote.

The 15 signatories to the letter featured many distinguished former career diplomats, including Thomas Boyatt, a former ambassador to Colombia and Burkina Faso who was held captive for six days after Palestinian terrorists hijacked his flight in 1969.