The other 70 percent were career diplomats who worked their way up through the Foreign Service. Career diplomats, on the other hand, often end up in more obscure places. While the State Department has a process for choosing its own career diplomats to take up ambassador spots, critics contend that the process for political appointees is opaque. In theory, at least, the career diplomats working under a politically appointed ambassador might constrain any inappropriate behavior once they are appointed. “They could not send a better U.S. ambassador to Prague,” Czech President Milos Zeman told her in a statement last week, according to Zeman’s office.

Source: Washington Post November 22, 2016 08:02 UTC