Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is blaming an exhaustive White House vetting process for the fact that the Obama administration has not yet named a person to run the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Six months into the administration’s tenure without having appointed someone to the agency’s top spot, Clinton told USAID employees on Monday that several people had turned down the job due to overly burdensome financial and personal disclosure requirements that she called a “nightmare,” “frustrating beyond words” and “ridiculous.”
She also said the White House had turned down her request to announce on Monday that someone — expected by officials to be physician and Harvard University professor Paul Farmer who is well known for his work in Haiti — would be named to the post soon.
Having been through a security clearance process with the US government, I can attest to the miseries of the vetting process –but Clinton should in no way use this as an excuse for not being able to select and appoint a qualified person to direct one of the most important foreign policy arms of the USG. Paul farmer would be an awkward fit for the position…to say the least. On the one hand he is amazingly brilliant and has done great work in his life ( I recently read his book Mountains Beyond Mountains); he has long criticized USAID and its way of doing business as ineffective and full of red tape; at the same time he is also extremely arrogant and pompous. The development community is full of pompous overpaid bureaucrats; we dont need another one. Hillary— please keep looking and stop giving poor PR excuses for the lack of movement on this front.
