Henri Barkey rails against the Obama administration’s selection of spectacularly unqualified nominees for some ambassadorial posts. He cites the well-known example of the clueless nominee for ambassador to Norway:

The nominee, a Long Island campaign bundler named George Tsunis, made a fool of himself during his Senate confirmation hearings last month. He was unaware of some of the most basic facts about Norway. He admitted never having set foot in the country, and he seemed to think that Norway, a monarchy, has a president. He also had no idea which political parties constituted Norway’s governing coalition, even though, as ambassador, he would be dealing with them. It seemed, as some later tweeted, that Tsunis had not even bothered to read the Wikipedia page for Norway.

Fortunately, good relations with long-time allied governments aren’t going to be irreparably harmed by the appointment of one or two thoroughly unqualified ambassadors, but sending political appointees as diplomats is a practice that seems needlessly damaging to the conduct of U.S. diplomacy. To qualify for these posts, nominees should have to be able to demonstrate at least a basic understanding of the countries where they will be posted, and preferably they should be drawn from those FSOs with the most experience in these countries. James Bruno discusses the same problem in Politico Magazine, noting that the current administration has significantly increased the number of political appointees to these posts since the 2012 election:

His second-term appointments have gone to political allies more than half of the time. Since World War II, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, that number has been lower: About a third of the ambassador posts have been offered to non-professional diplomats.

The ever-larger sums being spent on presidential campaigns probably account for the increase in political appointees in the new term, since there are presumably even more fundraisers and supporters to be rewarded this time around than there were in the first term. Since it seems unlikely under current law that campaign fundraising can be brought under control, there should be much less tolerance for political appointees in these posts, and that should start with rejecting the nominations of people as obviously unqualified for the jobs as Tsunis and Bell.