Finally...

Well at last it has happened. The Obama Administration has finally nominated the long-rumored favorite for the post of Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Judith McHale.

The White House put out this release:

Judith A. McHale, Nominee for Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Department of State

Ms. McHale is a leading media and communications executive whose career has been devoted to building companies and non-profit organizations dedicated to reaching out to and connecting people around the world. She is the former President and Chief Executive Officer of Discovery Communications. From 1987 to 2006, McHale helped build the parent company of the Discovery Channel into one of the world's most extensive media enterprises, with more than 100 channels telecast in over 170 countries and 35 languages to more than 1 billion subscribers. In the 1990s, McHale launched the non-profit Discovery Channel Global Education Partnership, which supplies free educational video programming to more than half a million students across Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. After two decades at Discovery, McHale extended her commitment to helping build opportunity for people in Africa. With the Global Environment Fund, a private equity firm, she worked to launch the GEF/Africa Growth Fund, an investment vehicle intending to focus on supplying expansion capital to small and medium-sized businesses that provide consumer goods and services in emerging African markets. McHale's commitment to global outreach efforts also includes her service on the boards of the Africa Society of the National Summit on Africa, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the National Democratic Institute, and Vital Voices. She previously served on the board of Africare. The daughter of a U.S. Foreign Service Officer, McHale was born in New York City and grew up in Britain and apartheid-era South Africa. Before joining Discovery, McHale served as General Counsel for MTV Networks and helped guide the company's international expansion.

Well, I wish Ms. McHale the best of luck in her new position, assuming of course that she is confirmed by the Senate. There is no doubt that she is a talented and experienced person, with a strong background in media and development.  But her qualifications are not the determining factor in a successful term as Under Secretary.

Previous PD Under Secretaries (known as "R" in Foggy Bottom) were no less talented or experienced in their own ways.  But each of them was stymied by the organizational box into which they were thrust.  No matter their good intentions or their connections to power, they each failed to accomplish anything of real substance because they were given a job with great responsibility but without much real authority.   You see, the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs has no line authority over the hundreds of public diplomacy officers and locally engaged staff at the Embassies and Consulates around the world that actually engage in public diplomacy.  Nor has the position any real authority over the funds that are spent for public diplomacy abroad. 

At best, the job can be said to be a member of "the corporate board" of the State Department with some limited power over two bureaus at State (IIP-International Information Programs and ECA-Educational and Cultural Affairs), the third Bureau under "R", PA-Public Affairs has rarely paid much attention to the Under Secretary and, if rumor is correct, the Office of the Spokesman--the most important and visible part of PA -- will be assigned directly to Secretary Clinton's office in the near future. This is a logical and sensible move which only recognizes the reality that PA works for the Secretary's image domestically; not the U.S. image abroad.   If Ms. McHale is to be successful, she will have to convince Secretary Clinton that the Department and the Secretary herself will be best served if "R" is given a far more independent and direct role in the conduct of public diplomacy by bringing all personnel and financial resources devoted to public diplomacy under her authority.   If PD were given the same level of cohesiveness and autonomy within State that USAID now enjoys, there is a chance that Judith McHale will go down in history as the most successful Under Secretary for PD and PA.   If not, she will likely join the ranks of the previous five Under Secretaries who expended their time and talent in a fruitless quest for an impossible dream.