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Comment by yardie | Hacker News Reader

All US ambassadorships are political appointment, therefore option 2 is the only answer. These positions are almost always ceremonial. They are there to execute the will of the president.

The real work is done by the diplomats who are appointed through the US Foreign Service office. They do the actual work of the embassies.

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> All US ambassadorships are political appointment, therefore option 2 is the only answer. These positions are almost always ceremonial. They are there to execute the will of the president.

Not really, a foreign service officer can be appointed by a president to be an ambassador. A recent example from the news is Marie Yovanovitch. In regular times, my impression was that foreign service officers were appointed to the more difficult and critical ambassadorships (e.g. Ambassador to the USSR), and friends of the president were appointed to "easy" ambassadorships (e.g. to a staunch ally with a fashionable capital).

A president can appoint a politically connected friend or choose one from the diplomatic corp. But in any case they are all political appointments selected by the president.

Now, for sensitive countries you want a specialist. Like your probably not sending golfing buddies to broker Israel/Palestine peace agreements. But they'll probably do alright being the Ambassador to Belgium or Canada. Those embassies are practically on rails.

In this case instead of a golfing buddy, his son-in-law was appointed to deal with Israel/Palestine.

Nepotism is a problem, as is cronyism.

Just to reinforce that this is correct and to add detail - the Deputy Chief of Mission is the senior career foreign service person responsible for actual embassy operations.

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