November 28, 2017

Yet Another Person Bails on the State Department “Redesign”

Mai/Rex Shutterstock via ZUMA

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Like Spinal Tap drummers, the folks tapped to lead Rex Tillerson’s overhaul of the State Department just keep imploding. The latest is Maliz Beams, former CEO of Voya, who lasted only 90 days:

An early leader of the overhaul was William Inglee, a former Lockheed Martin executive, who quickly moved on. Then came Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan, who was confirmed by Congress in May but stopped leading the effort after a listening tour involving 300 interviews of diplomats and civil servants. Then Beams stepped in to begin distilling the various ideas and recommendations of the overhaul into a workable concept, but in her three-month tenure, she never finished the job.

That’s from BuzzFeed. There are two basic possibilities here:

  1. Tillerson is crap at hiring people.
  2. The people are fine, but after they take the job they quickly realize that Tillerson’s plans are unworkable and poorly thought out.

If I had to choose, I’d guess that it’s a little bit of #1 and a lot of #2.

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We’ll say it loud and clear: No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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