Less than 48 hours after the White House made it official that Heather Nauert would be appointed the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, the Administration is already gearing up for what is expected to be a Senate confirmation battle over the former Fox-TV reporter.
White House “handlers” for Nauert, currently spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department, are expected to stress her credentials as a communicator in the mold of the outgoing — and much-liked — UN ambassador, Nikki Haley.
Senate Democrats, in contrast, will almost certainly base their opposition on Nauert’s lack of experience in foreign policy.
“Go to the bank on someone on the [Senate] Foreign Relations Committee giving Heather the ‘Biden Quiz,’ said one veteran Capitol Hill correspondent. He was referring to the now-famous grilling of the late William P. Clark, President Reagan’s nominee to be Deputy U.S. Secretary of State in 1981, by then-Foreign Relations Committee Member and Sen. Joe Biden, D.-Del.
Biden peppered Clark with such questions as whether he could identify the prime ministers of Zimbabwe and South Africa or name the leader of the British Labour Party. Clark, a California lawyer and jurist, did not know the answers to any of Biden’s questions.
(Humiliated in the world press, Clark was nevertheless confirmed by the Senate and turned in a much-praised performance as Deputy Secretary of State. He later served as Reagan’s national security advisor).
The White House is expected to counter with testimony to Nauert’s skill as a communicator on foreign policy issues and her excellent rapport with foreign correspondents. Comparisons are likely to be made in friendly news outlets between Nauert and the two past journalists who held the UN ambassadorship: ABC-TV reporter John Scali, who served as Richard Nixon’s ambassador from 1975-76, and J. Russell Wiggins, managing editor of the Washington Post, who was Lyndon Johnson’s last UN ambassador in 1968.
The White House is also expected to make the case that candidates for UN ambassador accused of inexperience and slim resumes have done well. When President Nixon signaled he wanted Harvard Prof. Daniel Patrick Moynihan as his man at the UN in 1971, syndicated columnists Bob Novak and Rowland Evans wrote that “the entire Foreign Policy establishment and its friends in the press [were] outraged that the President should name someone with so little experience in foreign affairs as Pat Moynihan.”
As it turned out, Nixon ended up naming Rep. George H.W. Bush, R.-Tex., to the position. Evans and Novak noted that “Bush knew even less about foreign policy than Moynihan, but was immeasurably less controversial. The Foreign Service establishment, unable to launch a second attack, acquiesced.”
Both Bush and Moynihan (who eventually did become UN ambassador in 1974) were considered outstanding ambassadors, their lack of credentials notwithstanding.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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