I'm not sure I understand Julian's demand for political neutrality in candidates up for patronage positions. You can't take the politics out of politics. Sam Fox isn't a Belgium expert, he's the CEO of a firm that specializes in leveraged buyouts and the top individual donor to the Republican Party. He is being offered an ambassadorship as a reward for financing the GOP's electoral machinery. There's nothing sacred in that, no elevated political exchange that we want to encourage. If folks like Fox think that financing vile smear campaigns like the Swift Boat Veterans will retard their ability to elicit payback and patronage, that's fine with me. But the salient point here is that the position is a reward for service in the cause of partisanship. If your side loses, you don't get a cookie. If you're nominated for a position because of your politics, you should expect to be judged based on your...politics. And if we don't like that focus, we should remake the job into a meritorious position for civil servants and experienced applicants.
