Cohen: The dumbing down of diplomacy doesn’t help Ontario – or America

Poor Tyler Albrecht. One day he is the Agent General of Ontario in New York; the next day, he isn’t. Now he’s a laughing stock.

This is what happens when governments care so little about public service that they appoint anyone to anything. Age, experience and intellect scarcely matter anymore. Today it’s about wealth, power and influence.

Albrecht is 26 years old. He graduated from Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland, in 2016 with a Bachelor of Business Administration. There he played lacrosse. He was also reportedly an intern in sales and trading for a summer in New Jersey, which seemed to be his sole credential to represent the wealthiest province in Canada in the corporate capital of the world.

Actually, we know little about Albrecht; his social media footprint has disappeared since Premier Doug Ford revoked the appointment, 24 hours after making it. Not that there was ever much to know about Albrecht. What counts is that he is a family friend of Dean French, the premier’s chief of staff, who engineered the appointment before he, too, was gone from his job.

Predictably, when the appointment was announced, Master Albrecht was hailed by Ivana Yelich, Ford’s press secretary, as “not only qualified, but also aligned with the priorities of this government and our business-friendly approach.” Hey, perhaps he would have been William Pitt the Younger, who became British prime minister at 24? Who knows?

Today Albrecht is no longer aligned with the government, let alone its priorities. This was the worst diplomatic appointment since Caligula was said to have appointed his horse consul.

But Albrecht was not alone. Taylor Shields, another family friend, was appointed agent general to London – a posting that was also repealed the next day. Shields, like Albrecht, was too close to French.

Forget, for a moment, that Ontario has had no agents general for decades. Forget that these positions were abolished because the province realized that it didn’t need them; promoting trade and investment is better left to the federal government.

Moreover, French did not care – if he even knew – that Ontario’s agents general were once people of substance: Adrienne Clarkson (Paris), Tom Wells and Robert Nixon (London). Our representatives mattered because we respected public service and lifted it, occasionally, above politics.

For example, Brian Mulroney sent Stephen Lewis, a New Democrat, to the United Nations. Jean Chrétien appointed Perrin Beatty as president of the CBC and Kim Campbell as consul general in Los Angeles. Both were Progressive Conservatives.

Now we descend to Donald Trump, who arrived without public service (neither military, elective nor appointed office) and created a cabinet of venality, ignorance and ineptitude.

The position of U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations has been held by Adlai Stevenson, George H.W. Bush and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, among others. Who cares that it has now come down to Kelly Knight Craft? In the re-writing of history, she was pivotal to the free trade talks (even as she allows that she did not attend most of them.)

Trump reflects the descent of politics, a culture of such indifference that a woman can make credible allegations of sexual assault years ago against him – preceded by many others – and America shrugs. Whatever. Anything goes.

Now Britain threatens to ape the U.S. with the clownish, vain Boris Johnson as prime minister. Max Hastings, the eminent newspaper editor who was Johnson’s boss, calls this prospect “a tasteless joke upon the British people … He is utterly unfit to be prime minister.”

Sometimes, though, governments get appointees right. The Globe and Mail reports that Trump will name Aldona Wos as the next U.S. Ambassador to Canada. If so, and if her biography is accurate, Wos is a superb choice.

She is a medical doctor who served in the state cabinet of North Carolina and previously was U.S. ambassador to Estonia. She comes from a distinguished Polish Catholic family who helped Jews escape the Warsaw Ghetto.

This is a woman of intelligence, character and achievement, worthy of Canada. Finally, Trump seems to have gotten one right.

Andrew Cohen is a journalist, professor and author of Two Days in June: John F. Kennedy and the 48 Hours That Made History.

Source: Ottawacitizen.com

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