Diplomatic And Consular Officers, Retired

During the final week of A-100, DACOR invited the 144th (along with our spouses) to a reception at their cool historic house near the State Department building. In addition to having this beautiful old house for members' use, DACOR holds various forums and lectures, and also parties for new FSOs, FS Specialists, and new Ambassadors at the completion of their Ambassadorial Seminar at FSI.

In that they are justly proud of their wonderful edifice, DACOR is kind of the Di-Phi of the Foreign Service. Alternatively, the Foreign Service itself is kind of like Di-Phi (incredibly bright people who take themselves very seriously), in which case DACOR is analogous to the Foundation. Either way, it seemed like a cool thing to join, and Bongsu and I became DACOR members after our A-100 reception a couple months ago.

As such, this evening we attended the reception for the most recent Ambassadorial Seminar. Most hilarious moment: the Ambassador-designate to [Redacted], on being introduced to me and hearing that I am headed to Copenhagen, assumed that I was going there as the Ambassador to the Kingdom of Denmark. I had to explain that I will actually just play the role of the bureaucrat behind the Non-Immigrant Visa window, and that Ambassador-designate Laurie Fulton had her confirmation hearing before the Senate yesterday. As soon as I started to explain, Amb. [name redacted] caught up to speed very quickly, but it was good for a laugh all around.

Another amazing moment came near the end of the party. I was talking with a guy whose name I am annoyed with myself for not having gotten, and in the way of small-talk mentioned that I was from North Carolina. He responded that he had only been to that state a few times, for work, having made several visits to Fayetteville in connection with some military cooperation work, and also a couple trips to Chapel Hill when the State Department was trying to interest the Kenan-Flagler Business School in setting up a satellite campus in Qatar in the middle east. I was amazed to hear that, since I was a UNC student at the time and, as University Columnist for The Daily Tar Heel, had broken the story and dedicated a couple of my columns to supporting the Qatar campus. So, we got a chance to reminisce together about the goal we didn't even know we were working on together. (Now, almost eight years later, there is still no business school satellite campus in Qatar, and it doesn't look like there will be, despite the great effort of the guy at the party and my small contributions.)

I also enjoyed chatting with some of the non-career political appointees. Those I spoke with seemed very well-qualified to lead a large team working on a vitally important mission. Given that Fulton herself is a non-career political appointee, I was glad to see how comfortably I am able to accept the authority of such people. To be honest, actually, I'm not sure I fully agree with the argument that career ambassadors would be preferable; in the private sector, after all, you don't usually hear much complaining when a top executive is hired from outside the firm. Anyway! I don't intend to get into this complex issue at the moment. For a discussion on that topic, the comments to this post at Hegemonist.com raise most of the important aspects and points of view.

Anyway, the party itself was fun. Bongsu and I both enjoyed wearing a suit and mingling with interesting people and asking them about their lives while drinking mediocre wine and eating hors d'oeuvre . We are happy to find that we like this kind of event, as we have been led to expect that we'll have many, shall we say, "non-declinable opportunities" to go to similar things in the future.