Big Obama donor quits envoy job amid criticism

[The Northerner]

WASHINGTON (AP) — As a supporter of presidential candidate Barack Obama, Cynthia Stroum was a superstar whose financial backing of the campaign landed her a plum diplomatic posting in Europe.

As America's ambassador to Luxembourg, the wealthy Seattle-based businesswoman was a disaster.

According to an internal State Department report released on Thursday, less than a week after she quit, Stroum's management of the U.S. Embassy in the tiny country was abysmal. The report says her tenure of about one year was fraught with personality conflicts, verbal abuse and questionable expenditures on travel, wine and liquor.

Stroum's case illustrates the pitfalls that presidents can face when they appoint non-career diplomats to ambassadorships as a reward for their political support.

The Luxembourg embassy "has underperformed for the entirety of the current ambassador's tenure," said the report, which was prepared last fall before she resigned abruptly. "At present, due to internal problems, it plays no significant role in policy advocacy or reporting, though developments in Luxembourg are certainly of interest to Washington clients and other U.S. missions in the NATO and EU communities."

Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5icvkPhBDrb3c8ySkXkQURKNJ9sSw?docId=306882dbed82458e8897d5afef59d730

[Poll_Blind]

1. Just how bad was she? People transferred to Iraq and Afghanistan rather than continue working for..

...her!

Worth reading the whole article, it's a quick read. Wow.

PB

[xchrom]

2. oy. nt

[LiberalFighter]

3. Do they provide sufficient training for these people?

[rhett o rick]

4. Heck of a job Brownie. nm

[47of74]

5. Here's a copy of the report from the OIG's web site

The following link goes to the OIG's report;

http://oig.state.gov/documents/organization/156129.pdf

Makes for interesting reading.

[tammywammy]

6. Sounds quite awful n/t

[Hannah Bell]

7. bill gates connection to family (stroum's father = capitalist):

Back when Mary Gates was worried about her son, Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates, dropping out of Harvard forever to focus on his then-fledgling software company, she sat young Bill down with Stroum over lunch, ``for a second opinion,'' recalls Mrs. Gates, a University of Washington regent and civic activist who first worked with Stroum during a United Way campaign.

Stroum encouraged young Gates to forget Harvard and continue with his plans for what a decade later would become the world's largest PC software maker.

http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19900930&slug=1095874