Over the last few days, I’ve been advanc­ing an argu­ment about the impor­tance of pub­lic per­cep­tion abroad, and the div­i­dends that a seri­ous engage­ment abroad could bring. It start­ed with a gen­er­al argu­ment about the best ways to pre­empt anti-Amer­i­can vio­lence. Then we dis­cussed how this applies to Iran. Then I talked about pro­mot­ing democ­ra­cy and Amer­i­ca more specif­i­cal­ly. This all lead to some par­tic­u­lar thoughts on han­dling Osama bin Laden.

I was encour­aged by the announce­ment that there were changes in how diplo­mats were being assigned. Instead of hav­ing as many diplo­mats in Ger­many as there are in India (which has 12 times the pop­u­la­tion and at least as much geopo­lit­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance), diplo­mats will be sent to areas of high­er pri­or­i­ty, and have to rotate through more dan­ger­ous areas.

Hav­ing expe­ri­enced diplo­mats in coun­tries that aren’t already our allies is a superb way to make this coun­try safer, at no real cost. When peo­ple have served in hotspots, they under­stand what makes those places into hotspots, and have ideas about fix­ing the prob­lems. (See, I can say nice things about this admin­is­tra­tion now and then!)

At the same time, Sec­re­tary Rice is propos­ing a revi­sion of the han­dling of for­eign aid. There are con­cerns that the cen­tral­iza­tion of aid oper­a­tions will put short-term polit­i­cal goals ahead of long term plan­ning. There are also con­cerns that this will politi­cize the aid process, bad news no mat­ter what.

Those con­cerns are exac­er­bat­ed by the per­son cho­sen to head up the aid pro­gram. As ThinkProgress puts it: Rice Appoints Polit­i­cal Syco­phant To Head U.S. For­eign Aid Efforts:

Tobias has con­si­tent­ly put the Bush admin­is­tra­tion agen­da before sci­ence and facts in the glob­al fight against AIDS, act­ing as the “front man for Bush’s ide­ol­o­gy-dri­ven poli­cies on pre­ven­tion and on treat­ment (of AIDS).”

His HIV-pre­ven­tion poli­cies have focused on “absti­nence-only-until-mar­riage” leav­ing “large seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion at imme­di­ate risk of HIV infec­tion.” He has also made inac­cu­rate pub­lic state­ments on the effec­tive­ness of con­doms in AIDS pre­ven­tion and has fund­ed ques­tion­able orga­ni­za­tions sup­port­ed by Pres­i­dent Bush, but lack­ing in tech­ni­cal com­pe­ten­cy in HIV prevention.

Ran­dall Tobias has a great resumé. He rose through the ranks at AT&T, becom­ing CEO after the breakup. From there he moved to CEO at Eli Lil­ly. From there he joined the ranks of indus­try lead­ers who went on to posi­tions in the Bush admin­is­tra­tion where they might have been at odds with their for­mer col­leagues, in Tobias’ case, as head of the Glob­al AIDS Fund. It comes as no sur­prise that the Fund has made lit­tle progress on reduc­ing costs by pur­chas­ing gener­ics, or extract­ing equi­table licens­es for gener­ic drug pro­duc­tion in the devel­op­ing world.

The prob­lem with his resumé is that his expe­ri­ence in for­eign aid is essen­tial­ly nil. For­eign aid, along with for­eign ser­vice diplo­ma­cy and the mil­i­tary, is an essen­tial part of the nation’s efforts to reach out and influ­ence the rest of the world. If some­one with his lim­it­ed expe­ri­ence were named to head the Depart­ment of State or of Defense, every­one would be up in arms.