This was a notice on the Executive Calendar of the U.S. Senate, last Thursday:
Calendar No. 328: Jeanne L. Phillips, of Texas, to be
Representative of the United States of America to the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development,
with the rank of Ambassador.
Reported August 1, 2001 by Mr. Biden, Committee on
Foreign Relations without printed report.
Regular readers of Mullings may remember Ms. Phillips as the executive director of the Presidential Inaugural Committee (PIC) who was simply known as "J.J."
I described her capabilities in a January Mullings titled, "J.J. Sez."
Shortly after the Inaugural, J.J. was nominated by President Bush to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) post which acts, I'm told, as a 30-country think tank providing a forum for countries to discuss best practices in developing economic and social policies.
J.J. is an excellent example of what a person - not a life-time government employee and not a corporate executive with a staff of dozens, just a regular person with a spouse and a grade-school-aged daughter - goes through when she says "yes" to a position of service to the people of the United States which requires Senate confirmation.
Months of:
- Filling out spectacularly intrusive forms;
- Doing heavy, often unaided, research;
- Suffering through background investigations;
- Attending meetings with people who either don't want, or have no
reason, to be there;
- Participating in interviews with people who think THEY should have
gotten the appointment;
- Placing phone calls to people who have suddenly become VERY
important;
- Waiting for return phone calls from those suddenly VERY
important people;
- Making weekly trips back and forth between Washington and Dallas;
- Trying to decide what to put into storage and what to schlep across
the Atlantic Ocean; and,
- Worrying whether the whole process will conclude prior to the
beginning of the new school year so your eight-year-old
daughter doesn't have to start school in Dallas
and then transfer to a school in Paris (which is
not Paris, Texas but Paris, France)
quickly turns the excitement of contemplating the job into the slogging drudgery of getting confirmed so you can accept it.
Early last week I drifted into the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing room to watch as J.J. and four other individuals had their confirmation hearing.
In addition to Jeanne for the OECD, there people who had been nominated for a position in:
- The Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC)
- The United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
- The International Monetary Fund (IMF), and
- The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (whose
acronym, for reasons which we are not allowed to know, is "The
World Bank.")
Almost everyone introduced the wives, husbands, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, mothers and/or fathers who had come to watch, with appropriate pride, this once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Senators showed up to introduce nominees from their states and quickly left "because of other pressing business." Here's some inside scoop: There is no "business" for a United States Senator which is not "pressing." Sometimes there are "pressing matters." Pressing their togas, would be more likely. And useful.
In the end, the full Committee reported out the nominations which then went to the full Senate for a scheduled Thursday night vote.
The pressure was on, because if the Senate adjourned for the August recess (lasting until after Labor Day) without considering a number of nominations which had been held up by alleged friends as well as avowed foes, then a significant number of folks would not be able to get their families moved prior to the beginning of the school year.
Thursday. No vote. The Senate voted on Robert Mueller to be FBI Director. F-B-I? COME ON! We're talkin' OECD here!
Watching the Senate get ready for adjournment Friday afternoon from Mullings Central, I couldn't stand it any more. I called the Committee and asked if the Senate had taken up the Executive Calendar and confirmed Jeanne L. Phillips. The young woman who answered said she had.
When next I see J.J., I get to address her as "Madame Ambassador."
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