It's not often that a plum ambassadorship goes to someone who isn't a career foreign service officer or a big bucks campaign contributor, but President Obama has nominated Anne Slaughter Andrew to be the ambassador to the Republic of Costa Rica.
Hmmm.
The prospective diplomat is an Indiana University trained attorney who currently is Principal of New Energy Nexus, LLC, and, according to the White House release on her nomination, "advises companies and entrepreneurs on investments and strategies to capitalize on the New Energy Economy."
But Andrew is also wife of Joe Andrew, former Indiana Democratic Party chairman who was tapped by Bill Clinton to be Democratic National Committee chairman from 1999 to 2001 who also was a big backer of then Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in her 2008 presidential bid--until five days before the must-win Indiana Democratic Presidential primary last year, when Andrew with great fan-fare threw Clinton under the bus, endorsed Obama, urged all his fellow Hoosiers to vote for Obama and called up party leaders and fellow superdelegates (Andrew had that status to the Democratic convention because he was a former DNC chairman) to basically shut the nominating contest down after the Indiana primary and get behind Obama.
In a public letter that at times was melodramatic and angst-ridden, Andrew wrote: "Why call for superdelegates to come together now to constructively pick a president? The simple answer is that while the timing is hard for me personally, it is best for America. We simply cannot wait any longer, nor can we let this race fall any lower and still hope to win in November. June or July may be too late."
Well, the contest did run until June and Obama still somehow made it to the White House. But for Joe, this was a selfless act: "My endorsement of Senator Obama will not be welcome news to my friends and family at the Clinton campaign," he wrote. "If the campaign's surrogates called Governor Bill Richardson, a respected former member of President Clinton's cabinet, a 'Judas' for endorsing Senator Obama, we can all imagine how they will treat somebody like me."
Geee, somehow he managed to survive and somehow the current Secretary of State must have an amazing amount of equanimity and grace not to have choked on this administration nomination.
A colleague found this You Tube video from May 2008 of Andrew talking about his switch from team Clinton to team Obama and its impact on his family.
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