Mr. Walt had a good article today on Foreign Policy critiquing Obama's most recent move to appoint Caroline Kennedy to the position of America's Ambassador to Japan. Here are a couple good excerpts from the article. [quote]My concerns have nothing to do with Ms. Kennedy herself, of course. I've had the pleasure of meeting her on several occasions and thought she was smart, well-informed, and engaging. But she's neither a diplomat nor an experienced politician, and she's certainly not an expert on East Asia. Unless I've missed something, she doesn't speak Japanese and has no academic or professional background in foreign affairs. Compared with some other former U.S. ambassadors to Japan (e.g., Mike Mansfield, Walter Mondale, Michael Armacost, or Tom Foley), she's a political neophyte[/quote] [quote]...roughly 30 percent of all U.S. ambassadors are political appointees rather than trained professional diplomats. [B]This practice is completely bipartisan, by the way, and it's one of the many reasons why U.S. diplomacy is often ineffective.[/B][/quote]