Penns Amy Gutmann and Comcasts David Cohen Could Land Ambassador Jobs From Plum Biden

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When Joe Biden left the public service in 2017, he landed at the University of Pennsylvania, drawn to a global business center in his name and a newly created faculty position that paid more than $ 911,000 out of about $ 2. years.

When he then launched his presidential bid, his first official event took place at the home of Philadelphia power broker David L. Cohen, where supporters raised more than $ 700,000 for Bidens’ campaign.

Now Cohen and Penns President Amy Gutmann is reportedly in line for some of the Bidens administration’s most prestigious ambassadors. Cohen, a Comcast executive, has long been considered to be in the process of becoming the Americas’ representative in Canada. And Gutmann is expected to be appointed ambassador to Germany, as German publication Der Spiegel first reported this week. The Biden administration shared the upcoming appointment with a senior German official earlier this month, Reuters reported.

Allies call them a pair of smart, skilled, and deeply experienced professionals who would represent Biden well to foreign leaders. They have each long been part of Philadelphia’s elite civic circles, running two of the city’s most powerful institutions.

But several foreign policy experts have said the appointments, if they occur, would continue a long-standing bipartisan tradition of using important foreign affairs jobs to reward friends, political allies and donors rather than expertise. .

No one would put a banker in charge of an aircraft carrier, Barbara Stephenson, former ambassador and career diplomat, said in an email. No other advanced country systematically puts amateurs in charge of its embassies.

READ MORE: Penn has paid Joe Biden over $ 900,000 since leaving the White House. What did he do to make money?

The ambassador is a personal representative of the president, so I can see a reason to have someone very close to the president in that role, said Dalibor Rohac, expert on Europe and foreign policy at the American Enterprise Institute of right. But I feel like it has really escalated in America to a situation where it’s being used as a patronage system. It comes at a cost to foreign policy.

He said the need for expertise and experience is particularly acute as the United States attempts to rebuild ties with its allies and confront Russia and China. Germany and Canada are among the country’s most important partners.

The stakes appear to be higher than usual, Rohac said. You need people who are at the top of their game.

No appointments have been made, so nothing is final, and both would require confirmation from the Senate. A White House official said on Wednesday that only about 30% of Bidens ambassador appointments should go to people with political ties, less than in the Trump administration and in line with other presidents.

Penn spokespersons have remained silent about Gutmann even as the school president made international headlines.

Gutmann, whose contract at Penn ends after next June, is a respected scholar whose father fled Germany to escape the Holocaust. She helped recruit Biden to Penn, according to former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell. The school created a new position, the Benjamin Franklin Presidential Practice Professor and the Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement.

Steve Ricchetti, Biden’s senior advisor, briefly served as the centers’ managing director and is now one of the people pointing administrations to ambassadorial appointments. Cohen was then chairman of the school board.

Penn paid Biden $ 371,159 in 2017 and $ 540,484 in 2018 and the first five months of 2019, according to financial records he leaked during his campaign, though this is a relatively small portion of the millions that he and his wife, Jill, won after leaving the White Loger. Its exact functions were unclear. He didn’t teach regularly and mostly made big public appearances, including three question-and-answer sessions with Gutmann, according to the Daily Pennsylvanian student newspaper, Penns.

University experts said he was likely hired more for prestige that might attract donors than for his personal impact on campus.

If Gutmann ends up representing Biden in Berlin, Rohac said, be there at an important time, as the United States encourages one of its closest European allies to take on China and Russia and exercise more strategic leadership. in Europe.

Germany is not an easy job. It’s not something that’s just going to involve socializing and having fun and just having a good time, Rohac said. There is an important agenda to follow.

Cohen, meanwhile, has been listed as one of Bidens’ top campaign donation collectors. His Mount Airy home became a regular fundraising stop for former President Barack Obama and then Biden.

If he were to become an ambassador to Canada, he would be the face of the administration in its dealings with one of the Americas’ largest trading partners, although he harbored frustration at a sometimes difficult relationship with the Trump administration. Cohen declined to comment this week, but told The Inquirer last month that the appointment was really hypothetical.

Steven Cozen, a longtime Biden ally and Philadelphia donor, said it made sense for the president to want people close to him in such key positions. He said Gutmann and Cohen have the right skills for the jobs.

He enjoys having friends he trusts and who are very talented in positions like this, Cozen said. He knows these people as people, and that’s so much more important because the whole role is relationship-based.

Most ambassadorial posts are awarded to foreign service professionals, but many experts still fret when some of the most prestigious posts are given to people whose main qualifications are political connections. It is a long-standing practice. Donald Trump has appointed inexperienced loyalists to key positions in Germany and the UK, who in turn have created international embarrassment with their actions and words.

Stephenson, former president of the American Foreign Service Association, which represents career foreign service professionals, said the spoils system should go.

The United States is an extreme case among the advanced countries in engaging in this practice, she said. There’s a reason all of these competing countries, allies combined, send all of their best career diplomats to serve as ambassadors in Washington.

Neither she nor Rohac personally criticized Cohen or Gutmann.

Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the liberal watchdog group Public Citizen, said the Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama administrations had given about 30% of ambassadorial posts to campaign donors. That jumped to 44% under Trump.

These political appointments are usually placed in friendly countries that require little diplomatic work or in safe, stylish and wonderful places to live, Holman said.

This is a corrupt practice that we have failed to change, Holman said.

Ambassadorial positions are sometimes attractive to donors because they are not subject to the same level of control over financial tangles as other senior administrative positions.

READ MORE: David Cohen was a 2020 political actor. His influence at home in Philadelphia has become another question.

Cohen’s potential international departure would continue his trajectory as a master of politics behind the scenes in increasingly large arenas.

He was chief of staff when Rendell was mayor of Philadelphia, helping lift the city from the brink of bankruptcy in the early 1990s. Since then, Cohen has been an integral part of Philadelphia’s political, business, philanthropic, and educational worlds, later becoming executive vice president of Comcast.

He also became a Washington insider for Comcast, leading high-stakes efforts such as obtaining regulatory approval for the company’s acquisition of NBCUniversal.

He’s also stepped back from his role at Comcast, moving from executive vice president to senior advisor to CEO Brian Roberts.

Editor Jonathan Tannenwald contributed to this article.

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