I know Professor Kaiser is also a fan of Kennan. He introduced me to Kennan's work.
Here is Kennan, re our Ambassadors, and also, I think, our diplomats, in general, here:
'FLASHBACKS'
"...ambassador to Moscow. The assignment has nothing to do with Soviet - American relations. The present ambassador, it seems, is leaving. It is the election year of 1952. For purely domestic political reasons, the administration is afraid to leave the post vacant. Foreign policy -- policy toward the Soviet Union -- plays no part in the decision. It never occurs to people in the administration that the position of American ambassador to Moscow has anything to do with policy. They don't really know, to tell the truth, what an ambassador is for...."
"They don't really know, to tell the truth, what an ambassador is for."
Without getting into the current Hillary matter, about which I know nothing, Kennan actually explained, in several works, echoing eg Tocqueville and others, at different places, why, structurally, the American political system does not do either diplomacy or foreign policy well at all.
He quotes Tocqueville in Russia and the West Under Lenin and Stalin, " a democracy can only with great difficulty regulate the details of an important undertaking, persevere in a fixed design, and work out its execution in spite of serious obstacles."
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