Serious question: Is being a Cabinet Secretary a better job than being in Congress?

Probably for a House member. You will always be introduced as Mr./Mrs. Secretary. You are giving guidance and making decisions instead of debating bills and trading votes. Instead of being one of 435 in the House, you are at the top of an organization of hundreds/thousands. Instead of an office of 15 staffers, you have an entire agency answering your RFI's and carrying out decisions. Also likely use of government planes for official travel.

Senate, I am not so sure unless it is SecState or SecDef.

 

Yes. In Congress, you're one of 435 or 100. In that cabinet position, you're the boss and answer only to the President.

 

Better for a house member? Absolutely. By a mile. Two-year terms and running for reelection require a HUGE amount of time and travel and fundraising.

 

Non-ending House campaigns and fundraising would suck for me. Senate seems much more stable and less chaotic with more prestige. Cabinet head sounds like real work if doing it right. I always thought that an ambassadorship in the right place would be nice!

 

I don’t know much about the process. I have always thought they’re mostly rich donors? Interesting to look at this list with pending applications and vacancies. Colombia is open lol!

List of Current U.S. Ambassadors

Edit: Who knew that Rahm Emmanuel is the current Ambassador to Japan? Sounds like a great gig.

 

Some are career diplomats others are patronage positions. Even the career diplomats have to be confirmed by the Senate.

As I understand---the career diplomats move around--the basic principle of moving up the ladder. Hence everyone has been confirmed in the current term. Some older diplomats likely retired and the chairs started rotating.

Salary wise--Senators make 174K

Ambassadors have a range of 124K to 187K.

Some of the posts are very glamorous--like England, Italy, France. But there are also posts such as Niger and Laos.

 

No, being a Secretary means you have to do real work and make real decisions. Being in Congress means you get to avoid both and complain about those who do. It’s no choice at all. Why do you think so many state governors have appointed themselves as senators of their state when the opportunity afforded itself?

 

The problem with cabinet and ambassador positions is you could easily be unemployed in 4 years or less if u run a foul of the Prez and/ or the Prez isn't reelected. Senator seems like the sweet spot to me.

 

Usually the “tough” positions involving adversaries or unstable parts of the world are the career diplomats, (a) because nobody wants those jobs as a “reward”, and (b) because you actually need serious people in those positions running those U.S embassies . I hope i don’t have to remind you what happened to our ambassador to Libya in 2012???

The cushy posts to Western Europe and friendly nations tend to be more patronage type picks or a President rewarding their “friends”.

 

Typically after every election but I'm not sure you would want to be an Ambassador for more than four years at any one place. Time to move up to another country or out, if your party won a second POTUS term so the POTUS can reward the fund raisers of the last election cycle. If there is a change in party control of the WH, almost all Ambassadors are going to be changed out, with the exception of any professional career foreign service Ambassadors in important countries that are seen as doing a good job and non-political.

Also, for much of the entertaining that Ambassadors do, they have to pay for it out of their own pocket. They have a budget for entertaining but it is not nearly enough to cover everything that an Ambassador is expected to do, so it becomes very expensive. The wine budget alone likely runs into hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

 

Any nation that the average America might want to vacation to is probably going to have a rich donor as the ambassador. Certain important countries need a steady hand on the tiller, which is why Rham Emmanuel is in Japan and Meg Whitman is in Kenya. Did not realize we had an Ambassador to Malta. That would be a great job.

 

I’m not sure why they “turn them over“ when selecting from civil career professionals. But they typically do that with nearly 100% of U.S. attorneys as well. So maybe that’s just a thing that has traditionally been done without there being a particularly good reason?

It probably makes more sense with the attorneys, as there is generally a wider pool of attorneys, and maybe you want to lean policy one way or the other. Whereas being a diplomat in unstable parts of the world is a smaller pool of qualified people (requiring on the ground local knowledge) and there is zero room for partisan political bs. That being said, as someone else said above not sure why anyone would want to be an ambassador for >4 or 8 years nor should we want super long term ambassadors. Rotating them can be a check on corruption vs. if you let an individual get entrenched with their own little fiefdom. An embassy should basically just be a nameless., faceless representation of the U.S. govt abroad.

 

I'm pretty sure they even rotate the foreign service people that do most of the work. Anyone I've talked to that had been in the foreign service had all kinds of postings, none super long term.

 

Both suck, you can make more $ outside of govt at that level.

 

But you can make even more in the private sector if you serve in the government for a little bit and build a network of contacts. Kristen Sinema only had to sell out for like 6 years to set herself up with dirty money for life.