President-elects can give the best Christmas present—ambassadorships to plush gigs in charming countries.
The American Foreign Service Association tracks and rails against appointing donors to embassies in every administration. They aren’t a disinterested party, but they have a point.
Being Trump, there are some particularly notable picks, like the very shouty Kimberly Guilfoyle going to be Ambassador to Greece on the strength of her credentials as Don Jr.’s ex. Trump’s in-law, the Trump-pardoned Charles Kushner, will be Ambassador to France.

But sweet ambassadorial gigs to low-stakes missions in Europe and elsewhere have frequently gone to donors, allies, and friends. Trump’s may be worse, but so far, it’s been a matter of degree, not of kind.
Presidents have also made some very thoughtful political appointments to key positions. George H.W. Bush sent the great Robert Strauss, the Texas lawyer and political fixer, to Moscow, despite Strauss being a long-time Democrat.
With that in mind, I was particularly interested in Trump’s pick for Japan. The bilateral relationship with Japan is one of our most important. They are a critical trading partner and security ally. Japan is currently the fourth largest economy in the world (they were number two only decades ago.) As a measure of respect and to emphasize their importance, high-level retired politicians have been appointed ambassador to Japan including retired Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, former House Speaker Tom Foley, former White House Chief of Staff and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, former Senate Majority Leader and White House chief of staff Howard Baker, and… wait for it… former Vice President Walter Mondale.
You knew this was going to come around to vice presidents soon, right?
Trump’s appointment is businessman Charles Glass, who served in the first term as ambassador to Portugal. In terms of importance, the jump from Portugal to Japan is a big one and Glass annoyed the Portuguese when he bluntly warned them they had to choose between the U.S. and China. Glass wasn’t necessarily wrong, but how you relay U.S. policies and discuss them with a nation’s leadership can be just as important as what the policies are. This is even more true in Japan. Still, Glass is by no means a ridiculous choice for this critical post.
However, if Trump had wanted to follow in the footsteps of his recent predecessors a former GOP VP with deep knowledge of Japan and Asia was sitting right there.
I’m talking about Dan Quayle.
Iced out of the major foreign policy arenas (Europe, Russia, and the Middle East) by the president, VPNSA Scowcroft, and Secretary of State Baker, Quayle focused his energies on areas not receiving presidential attention. He traveled extensively in Latin America and East and Southeast Asia. He had staffers knowledgeable on these topics to advise him. His second national security advisor, Karl Jackson, had been Senior Director for Asian Affairs at the National Security Council, before joining Quayle’s team. Quayle worked on lots of Japan-related issues as VP. In an interview, Jackson described Quayle to me as “…in some ways the real ambassador to Japan.”
Since leaving the vice presidency, Quayle has worked at Cerberus Capital Management, staying engaged in international affairs and finance.
So anyway, just saying, Quayle would have been a strong pick.
VPs as Ambassadors
Lots of VPs have been ambassadors. Adams and Jefferson of course, but also Martin Van Buren, George M. Dallas, William R. King, Levi Morton, Nelson Rockefeller, and George H.W. Bush all represented the U.S. abroad as they moved up the political ladder.
Of course, none of them knew that one day they would be VP, it was just a gig they took on their way up the political ladder. I’m more interested in former VPs who returned to public service as ambassadors. That list includes three of my favorite VPs: Hannibal Hamlin who went to Spain, Charles Dawes who went to London, and Walter Mondale who went to Japan.
Hannibal Crosses the Pyrenees
Hamlin was Lincoln’s first VP, a rock-ribbed Republican who was firmly dedicated to the abolition of slavery. He was not a member of Lincoln’s team of rivals and had no control of patronage. The one point on which he may have influenced Lincoln was advocating for African-Americans to be allowed to serve as soldiers. His own sons, serving in the Union Army, came to Lincoln and declared their readiness to command African-American troops. Ultimately Lincoln agreed. Hamlin also reviewed the Emancipation Proclamation, before anyone in the cabinet.
Hamlin was dropped from the ticket in 1864, Lincoln wanted a “war Democrat” to expand his political appeal. After Lincoln was assassinated, Hamlin’s replacement, Andrew Johnson rolled back Reconstruction and began the process of returning African-Americans in the south to oppression. Hamlin continuing as VP is one of the great might-have-beens of American history.
Hamlin returned to the Senate for two terms. After retiring he was an active player in the contentious 1880 Republican Convention. He mentioned to the new Secretary of State, and fellow Mainer, James G. Blaine, that he’d like to go Europe. In one of his last official acts before being assassinated, President Garfield nominated Hamlin to be ambassador to Spain. Hamlin enjoyed traveling through Europe. His duties as ambassador were not onerous and he spent a pleasant year in Europe. His appointment was a favor to a party stalwart who had served his country well.
On return, Hamlin truly did retire, although he kept a hand in. One of his last political appearances was in 1887, a speech to the Maine legislature calling for the abolition of capital punishment. He was also a leading advocate for establishing a national holiday to honor Lincoln. (This and more on Hamlin’s life can be found in a biography by his grandson Charles Eugene Hamlin.)
A Handy Man for the Special Relationship
Banker, soldier, musician, and Nobel Laureate, Charles Dawes was a lousy VP. When his term as VP ended in 1929, he went to the Dominican Republic as part of a mission to re-organize their national finances (he’d been U.S. Comptroller and Budget Director). He then headed to London. President Hoover had appointed Dawes ambassador to the United Kingdom. There were rumors that Hoover had offered Dawes the position in exchange for Dawes’ support at the GOP convention. There isn’t much support for this, in fact Hoover wanted Dawes to revitalize the stalled naval arms limitation treaty talks. Hoover, a Quaker, was deeply committed to this and Dawes was, in the words of the United Press, “Uncle Sam’s Prize Handy Man.”
(Much of this comes from a wonderful biography of Dawes by Annette Dunlap that was sponsored by Evanston History Center—which is located in the Dawes home!)
Dawes had deep experience at international negotiations. His Nobel Peace Prize had been for managing German reparations after World War I. He had learned the utility of separating the technical discussions between economists and the political discussions between the diplomats. He proposed the same, that national naval experts hammer out definitions so that the statesmen could then negotiate the treaty. Dawes work over the summer of 1929 set the stage for an October meeting in Washington between UK Prime Minister MacDonald and Hoover. This meeting led to the 1930 Naval Disarmament Conference and the subsequent agreement between the U.S., U.K., and Japan.
After that, Dawes duties were mostly ceremonial, and he became restless. He left the U.K. in late 1931 to return to the U.S. and become head of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to stabilize failing banks.
Fritz in Tokyo
After winning the election in 1992, Clinton’s transition team invited former Vice President Mondale to be ambassador to Russia. Mondale accepted, but then thought better of it. To his pleasant surprise, the Clinton team came back and suggested Japan. Mondale’s wife Joan had connections to Japan. Her family had been missionaries there and included Edwin Reischauer, who was JFK’s ambassador to Japan.
When Mondale arrived in Japan, trade issues were particularly hot. The U.S. was coming out of a recession and Japan was seen as “winning” economically. Mondale sought wins that didn’t rely on humiliating or browbeating the Japanese. Taken from his memoir, The Good Fight, Mondale reported modest success, negotiating 17 agreements to open Japanese markets and lowering the economic tensions in the U.S.-Japanese relationship.
This was wise, since he would need the political capital later for a series of security crises starting with North Korea withdrawing from the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1994. Japan began reconsidering its own security posture. Japan’s Constitution, which was imposed by the U.S. after World War II, severely limited the size and role of Japan’s military. Japan effectively outsourced its security to the United States. New threats were emerging with the end of the Cold War. The Japanese knew that having Americans die in their defense while they were unable to act would damage the relationship. As the U.S. ambassador, Mondale recognized that the U.S. could not dictate what Japan should do, but that we could quietly nudge and encourage Japan to change to reflect the new geopolitics.
In 1995 three U.S. servicemen on Okinawa raped a twelve-year-old girl. The heinous crime sparked huge protests on Okinawa, which was already frustrated with the massive U.S. military presence. It became an increasingly hot political issue in Japan, but at the same time the Japanese relied on the presence of U.S. forces for security.
Mondale led U.S. efforts to apologize and consulted with the Japanese about how best to handle the crime. He made no excuses, but worked to ensure that it did not derail U.S.-Japanese relations. Collaborating with the U.S. military and local and national Japanese officials the U.S. presence in Okinawa was reduced (modestly) without reducing the overall U.S. military presence.
Just as this crisis was winding down, China began firing missiles in the direction of Taiwan. The Clinton administration responded by sailing two carrier groups through the Taiwan Straits. Japan was watching China nervously and was reassured by the muscular U.S. response. Mondale as ambassador was charged with personally reassuring Japan’s leaders that the U.S. was committed to their security.
Looking Ahead
Future VPs will probably not need pleasant sinecures as Hamlin desired. Travel today is much easier, and former VPs can sit on boards and give speeches. People who become VP tend to want to accomplish things and are usually pretty good politicians. It is difficult to say that they make “better” ambassadors than senior foreign service diplomats. But for high-profile positions of interest to the administration, a former VP as ambassador can be useful.
In the case of Charles Dawes, his strong working relationship with President Hoover and his experience at international negotiations played a key role in moving the naval arms limitations talks forward. Sadly, a decade later, this work was in shambles with the rise of Hitler and the outbreak of World War II. The peace negotiations in the years after World War I did provide frameworks and approaches that were revisited as the U.S. and Soviet Union began to consider arms control.
Mondale’s time in Japan highlights how politicians “get” how other politicians tick. Having wooed voters and been under public pressure, he understood what Japanese politicians faced, what they needed to get to an agreement, and how pressuring them and backing them into corners could be counterproductive.
The supply of former VPs is limited. Pence and Cheney are not likely to receive any invitations from a Trump administration. When Democrats retake the White House (as they eventually must), Gore will be getting old, he’s also had an active career since leaving elected office. Harris, assuming she doesn’t return to elected office, might find an ambassadorial post somewhere critical (maybe India, where she has family) an attractive to serve.
Unlike the president, I can’t hand out cool ambassadorships. But I can offer fun little history lessons. That’s my holiday gift—and to all a good night.