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Aughie and Nia start a new series discussing the cabinet level departments of the United States Government. The first episode starts with the first department created, the Department of Foreign Affairs.
This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
Announcer: Welcome to Civil Discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American Government and offer contexts around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. Now your hosts, Nia Rodgers, Public Affairs Librarian and Dr. John Aughenbaugh, Political Science Professor.
N. Rodgers: Hey, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning, Nia. How are you?
N. Rodgers: I'm good. How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: I'm good, and in one of the reasons why I'm good Nia is listeners. As we want to do on this podcast.
N. Rodgers: We're starting the thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: We're starting the thing. I was going to say a series, but every time we start a series, we digress.
N. Rodgers: We totally know we're going to digress during this thing because that is the nature of this podcast.
J. Aughenbaugh: But here's our plan. Today's episode is the first of a number of episodes where we focus on federal government cabinet departments, and at the time as we're recording this, there's 15 of them.
N. Rodgers: All bets are off as to whether all of them will still exist by the time we get done with this thing, or whether there's more added because that happened after 911.
J. Aughenbaugh: Whatever, yes.
N. Rodgers: Like all of a sudden poof done. New department when we hadn't had one for 30 years, and then we got a new one. We approached this in many we could do them alphabetically, we could do them by coolness factor, and then we realized what we should really do them is in order of their creation.
J. Aughenbaugh: Creation
N. Rodgers: While that sounds easy, it's not, because several of them were co-created and a couple of them changed from their names-
J. Aughenbaugh: Changed.
N. Rodgers: To something else. Until then we were like, men, so just bear with us. We're going to, generally speaking, go in order of their creation.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's correct.
N. Rodgers: But be prepared for [inaudible] surprise digression here and there because it's not really a surprise at all, it's us.
J. Aughenbaugh: Correct.
N. Rodgers: But that means we get to start with.
J. Aughenbaugh: The State Department.
N. Rodgers: The State Department.
J. Aughenbaugh: The Department of State, yes.
N. Rodgers: Except it was not called that.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: It's first iteration.
J. Aughenbaugh: To demonstrate your point, Nia, when it was first created, what we now call the State Department, was entitled The Department of Foreign Affairs, which was created in July of 1789.
N. Rodgers: Yeah, I need to note for the record here. My librarian title is public affairs librarian. It amuses me its level public affairs as opposed to private affairs, and in this case, foreign affairs. It's a funny old-school way to think about it, but a Department of Foreign Affairs.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, what was particularly unusual Nia, about the Department of Foreign Affairs was that initially, it had a pretty substantial list of domestic duties.
N. Rodgers: Foreign Affairs, and I guess at that time, meaning Kentucky.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Weird, very weird. Wait. Can we first note that Washington signed that into law six days after it was approved? That didn't get a whole lot of pushback.
J. Aughenbaugh: No. It was very common for the prominent nations of the world at that time to have designated individuals to represent a contrary to the rest of the world, and again this was one of the chief defects of the Articles of Confederation. The national or central government had so very little authority that the individual states were largely conducting their own individual foreign affairs with the dominant, if you will, governments of that time.
N. Rodgers: Which is a terrible idea.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's a terrible idea.
N. Rodgers: France has a treaty with Georgia and France has a treaty with Virginia, and they all say something slightly different like that you're asking for a nightmare. That's a nightmare scenario.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's a nightmare scenario, and it would allow Great Britain and France to basically go ahead and pit one state against another state. You can't create a new nation where the individual if you will subunits of government are competing with one another.
N. Rodgers: You're asking for Civil War at that point.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Go ahead.
N. Rodgers: As a side note, so this is July 21st, it's passed July 27th, it's signed, and then in September of the same year, so two months later.
J. Aughenbaugh: We get our first secretary.
N. Rodgers: It gets renamed.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: It's renamed to the Department of State.
J. Aughenbaugh: State, yes.
N. Rodgers: Because somebody had said Department of Foreign Affairs, is that a good idea should be having foreign affairs? Should maybe having domestic affairs. It changes over to Department of State in September and then.
J. Aughenbaugh: Who gets appointed?
N. Rodgers: I have no idea who the first, wait was it TJ?
J. Aughenbaugh: It was, Thomas Jefferson. Yes, and this was actually a sign of how politically astute George Washington was as our first president. Washington by enlarge, was non-partisan though he leaned towards the Federalist Party. But his first Cabinet appointment, the departmental appointment was a member of the opposition party. Thomas Jefferson was a Democratic-Republican and Washington, goes ahead and names him because Jefferson had so much if you will, experience representing the young country overseas.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. Because when Jefferson spent time before the revolution going to France and being like, hey, would you like to hang out with us on our side, because that George is a nutcase ever in England?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. If we're going to break away from the Brits, will you guys be our friend?
N. Rodgers: The enemy of my enemy is my friend, right?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Because France and Germany go way back in their ethnicity.
J. Aughenbaugh: France and Great Britain.
N. Rodgers: Sorry, not Germany, France, and Great Britain.
J. Aughenbaugh: We'll get to Germany in just a few minutes.
N. Rodgers: Timewise way later. TJ, sorry, I shouldn't call him TJ except here in Virginia that is a fond term. But is also Thomas Jefferson was a controversial character about whom history, it has mixed review.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, mixed review. But also on this podcast, let's be very clear as our longstanding listeners know. We do take liberties with names.
N. Rodgers: It's generally done in effect.
J. Aughenbaugh: With fondness.
N. Rodgers: Genuinely.
J. Aughenbaugh: I mean, because we spent a lot of time to talking about the names of elected officials, judges, bureaucrats. We also spent a lot of time on names of institutions. After a while, there's only so many ways you can go ahead and say the Department of State. Just say the State Department. Or Chief Justice John Roberts, you refer to him as?
N. Rodgers: J Rob.
J. Aughenbaugh: J Rob.
N. Rodgers: When I'm being formal, CJ J Rob. It's done with funds.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, as my students will know, there are certain Supreme Court justices who pens so many majority opinions. After a while, I start using derivatives. Our good friend, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. I was never a friend with Oliver Wendell Holmes.
N. Rodgers: I'm old, but I'm not that all.
J. Aughenbaugh: That old.
N. Rodgers: I'm not old enough to actually remember TJ is Department of State. Wait, were they always referred to as the Secretary of State?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, and that nomenclature came pretty early on. Jefferson was nominated by Washington. The Senate confirmed him rather quickly as our first Secretary of State.
N. Rodgers: I'm not surprised by that. He would have been a lion of his time.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Like there are people whose names are so well-known, whether you like them or not, they are so well-known that their name has its own gravitas.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. [inaudible] I mean, let's face it, he owned these chops during the revolution.
N. Rodgers: This is not to save it on a personal level. He was not somewhat questionable as a historical figure.
J. Aughenbaugh: Sure. I mean, from his racist views. The fact that he had numerous affairs with his slaves.
N. Rodgers: Did not free them.
J. Aughenbaugh: He did not free them.
N. Rodgers: I mean, one could argue that's rape.
J. Aughenbaugh: He's very controversial.
N. Rodgers: But what's interesting to me and your list is that all of the first few Secretaries of State, our guys whose names we know. James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Thomas Jefferson.
J. Aughenbaugh: They all went on to become president.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. Was that the way that you got to be president? Was that you served as Secretary of State?
J. Aughenbaugh: At that time, it was viewed as the position other than president that gave you the best or most adequate training to be president.
J. Aughenbaugh: So much of the young nation was, is this nation going to survive? How do we navigate the fact that both Great Britain and France quite clearly had intentions to, if you will, take over the young country? Because they didn't think the United States was going to last.
N. Rodgers: I have a question.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: You said that they did a bunch of different stuff other than what we normally think of as the Secretary of State doing now?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: One of those that you have listed in here is the executive and judicial branch commissions.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Is Marbury v. Madison because Madison was the Secretary of State?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. But before Madison was John Marshall. John Marshall didn't deliver Marbury's judicial commission. Why? Because more than likely, John Marshall was worried about his nomination to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
N. Rodgers: He had other things on his mind.
J. Aughenbaugh: A bunch of judicial commissions didn't get delivered. Jefferson gets elected president, he picks Madison to be as Secretary of State, Madison says to Jefferson, "Mr. President, I have a whole bunch of judicial commissions that were never delivered by my predecessor. What should I do with these?" Jefferson was just like, "Well, they're all going to be filled by Federalists and we're Democratic Republicans."
N. Rodgers: Burn them in your fireplace.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Don't deliver them, and William Marbury says, "Woah, wait a minute. Per the law, my commission was already signed and sealed. Secretary of State Madison, you need to deliver it." That's how the case becomes known as Marbury versus Madison.
N. Rodgers: They were still doing that in Madison's time? They were still delivering?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Did they do the census until the Commerce Department?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. The State Department had the responsibility of doing the census.
N. Rodgers: Because the census is constitutional. You must count the people every 10 years. It's very specific that it has to be done. If you're the first department, I guess you're probably the department that does everything because-
J. Aughenbaugh: You are the first department.
N. Rodgers: You are the first department.
J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners, you can think about this. Most state governments, even today, have secretaries of state. State governments do not have robust foreign affairs operations.
N. Rodgers: Not generally and we're okay with that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, in fact, according to Article 1, Section 10 of the US Constitution, they can't.
N. Rodgers: Right. But even if they want to friendly negotiating things, they're not allowed to.
J. Aughenbaugh: They're not allowed to. But most states have this position. In almost every state, Nia, they do basically the organization in implementation of state government. The Commonwealth Virginia has a Secretary of State. That's what they do. They do domestic stuff within the state.
N. Rodgers: I'm not surprised at what ends up being is, and don't take this wrong secretaries of state out there who may be living and listening to this podcast which would surprise me greatly, but they're the kitchen drawer where you put everything and then it gets farmed out to the proper, well, at least in the beginning, that's how it was working.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. They are glue to state government.
N. Rodgers: But then they trough there for a little while. You get past those first few fabulously well-known founder guys.
J. Aughenbaugh: When John Quincy Adams, who was the son of President Adams, stepped down as Secretary of State in 1825, the department basically had very little role in our federal government until the Civil War. Again, the Civil War demonstrated the importance of having a State Department because during the Civil War, the Secretary of State had a rather prominent role to go ahead and make sure that foreign nations were not participating too much in our nation Civil War.
N. Rodgers: Right. Because then it becomes a proxy war for Great Britain and France.
J. Aughenbaugh: France and Spain, etc.
N. Rodgers: Whoever else wants to get in on that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Get involved.
N. Rodgers: Can we talk briefly size?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Go ahead.
N. Rodgers: In 1790, the number of people in this department was eight.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Like him, and him, and him, and him, and him, and me are going to go to dinner and do everything that we need to do and then go home. In 1830, it's was 23, so, they've gone up fourfold.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Up to 23 people, which is smaller than any class you've ever taught at VCU.
J. Aughenbaugh: That is correct. Yes.
N. Rodgers: Then in 1860s, they're up to a big whopping 42.
J. Aughenbaugh: Forty-two. Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Now, I would be willing to bet that the secretarial pool in the main Secretary of State's office is more than 42 people now.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, my goodness. Yes.
N. Rodgers: But they did the entire work of the agency with 42 people.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I think people need to remember that department's haven't always been these huge, enormous things that we see now where you have thousands and thousands of employees and your various agencies.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's a really good point, Nia, because listeners, you got to remember, well until the Civil War, the federal government in United States was not the largest level of government in this country. In fact, many public administration scholars remind us that after the Civil War, after the fighting in the Civil War, the federal government again shrank. When the Great Depression hit in the late 1920s, early 1930s, the level of government that still did the bulk of public service in this country with state government.
N. Rodgers: But the one area where it did grow, which I find fascinating in your notes, is the consular. We will send people to other countries in order to have representatives in those other countries. Because I guess until then it just wasn't a thing. Not a lot of nations had permanent console or what we think of now is embassies, in other countries, and in 1860 we had 253 consular employees, which is, for anybody doing the math at home like five times what the number of people at home we're doing in the Department of State in the same year. It really was focused outward to negotiate around the world these kinds of relationships in the United States.
J. Aughenbaugh: To fly the flag, the United States foreign policy during that period was decidedly isolationist, but how do you go ahead and make sure that you're not forgotten when the world leaders or powerful countries of the world or making decisions? How do you make sure that you're not forgotten? You have counselor agents.
N. Rodgers: I have to assume that they were also doing at least a little bit of the same thing that they do now, where they work out commercial concerns.
N. Rodgers: People abroad, expats.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, that becomes one of the primary focuses of the State Department post-Civil War, because the United States economy shifts from agrarian to industrialization, so how do we tell companies in the United States, okay, continue to grow and expand? Well, you make sure that there are consumers in other parts of the world that want American goods.
N. Rodgers: You work through all the duties and customs, and all that paperwork.
J. Aughenbaugh: International law implications, contracts, etc.
N. Rodgers: Super-helpful, I'm assuming to have somebody in the country who speaks the language?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: In case you don't for whatever reason? I think that's fascinating, that they kaboomed into their consular part.
J. Aughenbaugh: That creates a division in the State Department that persisted well into the 20th century because you had the consular side, the foreign service side versus the State Department creating US foreign policy side. We're going to talk about this a little bit later on in the podcast. But you almost see this divide within State Department personnel. Are you a foreign service person or are you a State Department policy person who never goes outside the country, who's crafting policy that we folks out in the hinterlands of Asia or Europe, or Latin America, we got to implement this stuff. We got to interact with the natives. We got to make this stuff work well for you guys back in Washington DC.
N. Rodgers: This pie in the sky.
J. Aughenbaugh: There was this division which really doesn't get reconciled until Post World War II, interestingly enough.
N. Rodgers: Who was the Secretary of State during the Civil War?
J. Aughenbaugh: One of the most prominent, and I think both you and I think under-recognized American politicians. William Henry Seward, he was Lincoln's Secretary of State and he was Lincoln's principal advisor on a broad range of wartime decisions and in particular, made sure that the European nations did not officially recognize the confederacy.
N. Rodgers: Because if they had that would have entrenched the war significantly. If the South had gained traction with Europe, there might have been a divided nation at that point.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because that would have forced the union then to make a decision. Do we also declare war against any European nation that recognized and/or officially supported the Confederacy? Now what you listeners don't know is Secretary of State Seward also did what, Nia?
N. Rodgers: I actually think probably people will know when I say it. You probably heard this in your high school history class, Seward's Folly, what's known as Seward's Folly, or the purchasing of the territory of Alaska from the Russians. The inner winter hanging around in Alaska being First Nations people in anyway and the Russians walk over and say, hey, we own this place. Then you would say what ifs because for them, there's not a fight because they don't even recognize Russian ownership so there's a whole bunch of issues related to that. But then Russia later was like, we have this big chunk of Alaska and we don't know what to do with it, and it's just full of ice and polar bears and we got to sell it maybe to an American because they like to spend money on crazy stuff. Look at that whole Louisiana Purchase thing. They bought a giant swamp, so maybe they'll buy this big chunk of ice. Seward was like me, I want this because it was an expansion,.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh yes.
N. Rodgers: He wanted land and by the by, Alaska was huge. We are talking about a huge piece of land. They wanted almost nothing for it, relatively speaking so they sold it to him.
J. Aughenbaugh: He agrees to the purchase price and then basically has to present it to the Senate to approve it, and he just got roasted. Because US senators were like, why are we spending money on this piece of land that many of us never heard of?
N. Rodgers: $7.2 million.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Which at the time was exorbitant. But now, when we look back on it, you've got all of Alaska for $7.2 million. Well done, sir. Well done to you.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. At the time the media referred to it as Seward's Folly.
N. Rodgers: Andrew Johnson's polar bear garden was one of the other phrases that it gets referred to. But it's very forward thinking because turns out there's gold in Denver hills. There's gold under that var, ice as it were, and then future, future holy cow, there's oil under that ice.
J. Aughenbaugh: Post World War II, when the nation enters the Cold War with the Soviet Union.
N. Rodgers: There's a way to keep an eye on them.
J. Aughenbaugh: I mean, you can't get any closer than the Bering Strait.
N. Rodgers: You can literally see Russia from Alaska. Caitlin was right about that. It turns out to be a very forward thinking purchase, but I'm sure they thought he was a giant nutcase when he came back and said, guys, I found this property, you're going to love it. It's got an ocean view. It's super cool in the summer, it's totally fabulous and they're all like it's where, it's what? It's not even continuously attached to us.
J. Aughenbaugh: The Canadians don't want it.
N. Rodgers: Thanks, no thanks. We've already got plenty of polar ice cap. We don't need more. Anyway, I just loved Seward's Folly. What they mocked at the time, turns out Congress had no idea what they were talking about. It's been a great purchase for the United States, cheap at ten times the cost.
J. Aughenbaugh: It took nearly 100 years before Alaska became a state. I mean if think about it. Seward is also interesting to you. I don't know if you knew this. There's a book written by a historian, Doris Kearns Goodwin.
N. Rodgers: Love her.
J. Aughenbaugh: Team of Rivals.
N. Rodgers: Yes.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's about how Lincoln put together his cabinet and I've used that expression, listeners, if you don't know. The cabinet is is comprised of all the secretaries of the departments.
N. Rodgers: Plus a few other odd.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Usually the Vice President.
N. Rodgers: National Security Council.
J. Aughenbaugh: But back then, it was Lincoln and about five Cabinet Secretaries, and Lincoln in making his choices basically picked everybody who ran against him for the Republican Party presidential nomination in 1860.
N. Rodgers: Under the idea that ideas are a good thing and we should bring as many of them to the table as possible.
J. Aughenbaugh: But also, as the historian Goodwin points out, by putting them in his cabinet, he effectively muzzled them because they couldn't sit outside of his cabinet and criticize him when they were part of his administration. You went ahead and mentioned your enemies. Your enemy's enemy is your friend. Well, there's a Sun Tzu adage, keep your friends close but your enemies closer.
N. Rodgers: Keep an eye on your enemies.
J. Aughenbaugh: He brought in his rivals. Initially, Seward, like a couple of the other cabinet secretaries, thought that they could go ahead and just run roughshod over Lincoln. But Lincoln demonstrated greater leadership in administrative, if you will, chops than they thought and Seward became one of his primary, if you will, advocates. But it's just fascinating because he was a member of the team of rivals. After the Civil War, The State Department grew, but primarily for economic reasons.
N. Rodgers: Because there we are, we're a young industrial nation, we are manufacturing and trying to send stuff around the world.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: All these guys, all these consular services that are placed in other countries are helping to grease those wheels.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right and there was another war at the tail end of the 19th century, the Spanish-American War.
J. Aughenbaugh: It wasn't much of a war as far as wars go.
N. Rodgers: I know this is so sad, so don't point your finger at me, even though people can't see you, I can see you. Is the thing that stands out to me about Spanish-American War is it made Roosevelt's career.
J. Aughenbaugh: Right, Theodore Roosevelt.
N. Rodgers: That's where Teddy Roosevelt got his reputation for being in riding into battle and being a hero and speak softly and carry a big stick and all that, isn't that him? I think that's him.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, rough riders.
N. Rodgers: That whole jam in my mind comes from Teddy Roosevelt.
J. Aughenbaugh: Now, it's also the war that many Americans should know because that's how the United States established a presence in Southeast Asia, particularly the Philippines. But it's also how we came for and also Guam, but it's also how we came to possess Puerto Rico. It's an important war, but as far as wars and duration and what they were fighting for, it's usually for God.
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: But the Spanish-American War really demonstrated why the State Department was still very important. Because as many went ahead and pointed out, the State Department was essential in regards to maintaining a US precedence around the world even though our stated foreign policy was isolationism.
N. Rodgers: Right. We're mostly internal, but we're keeping an eye on you.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: We're keeping our finger on the pulse of other nations because if this thing blows up, we want to know. We want to be able to either turn up and pull back or we want to know whether we're going to add to get into it or not.
J. Aughenbaugh: When Teddy Roosevelt becomes president and he negotiates a peace treaty between Japan and Russia, it's not because Theodore Roosevelt was an expert on either nation.
N. Rodgers: Or particularly liked either nation.
J. Aughenbaugh: But you know who were experts? State Department officials.
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: Teddy gets the glory. He gets the Nobel Peace Prize, but it was the State Department that was, we need to step in here.
N. Rodgers: But Secretary of State, John Hay is out there saying, China's pretty important, a lot of people big. He is also out there saying, what I think is fascinating is the building of the Panama Canal. Is all kudoed down to Theodore Roosevelt, but that took an enormous amount of negotiation and like working with the French and working with the Panama citizens and had a lot drama involved there.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, the Panama Canal at that time was owned by the Colombian government. You're talking about some really intricate negotiations, just to go ahead and allow the United States to go in and do what the French were not able to do, which was to create the canal.
N. Rodgers: Yeah, but didn't we create Panama first?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, yeah.
N. Rodgers: But that is all negotiation and diplomacy and all that work. We didn't go in there and fight, well, it may have been a little bit of fighting, but anyway. What I'm also fascinated about is, so we go from roughly internal.
J. Aughenbaugh: Focus.
N. Rodgers: No, sorry, internal employees. Thank you, that's the word I was trying to find, of 42, and in 1920 we're up to 1,128 employees with a budget of $2,800,000
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: We're starting to recognize this whole utility of the State Department as this multifunction institution. It does internal stuff, it does external stuff. It tries to prevent us from getting involved in other people's wars, and then along comes World War 1. Where nobody gets to stay out of it. Hence the name World War. No one gets to stay, I mean, like tiny little countries get to stay out of it. Some people declare themselves out of it, Switzerland. We are not part of this war, leave us alone. We're not interested in your war mongering mongery stuff, but everybody else gets embroiled.
J. Aughenbaugh: The State Department had a huge role in ending the war. Again, a president gets to claim the glory, Woodrow Wilson, the chief architect of the Treaty of Versailles to end World War 1. But according to most historians, the State Department had a huge role in vetting what all the other nations would require to end the war.
N. Rodgers: Can we talk about that, that's a huge. I think that happens all the time when you see the treaty is signed, Yalta. Where you get Stalin and you get Churchill and you get Roosevelt, and they're all signing stuff and that's wonderful. But that is the culmination of hundreds of hours of diplomats from every country working to be like, you'll take this and then they go to another room and they say okay. They say they want that, what do you think about this? Everything person is like, give them a little bit of this, but I want that in return. It's hundreds of hours of that, where you are trying to figure out what everybody can live with, line by line. What everybody can live with, or at least everybody that you care about, because in that particular instance Germany did not get a vote, because they lost.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, they lost. They were the instigators of the war so we're going to punish them.
N. Rodgers: Right, which as we see in World War 1 turned out very poorly a few years later.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: But that's what happens when you don't take into account what the losers need as well as what the winners need.
J. Aughenbaugh: Winners need, that's right.
N. Rodgers: That was a diplomatic failure. The diplomatic failure at World War 1, it means that there was another world war. But I do think you're right. It's the president's name that gets signed on something and so we're like, oh, President Roosevelt, blah, blah, blah or president this or president that, no. Some guy named Joe Aughenbaugh sat in a room with another guy named Joe Aughenbaugh from France and I don't know how you would say it in German because I'm terrible with languages.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, actually Aughenbaugh is German.
N. Rodgers: His cousin, but they sit around and they have these discussions that go on for hours about, can we put an 'and' there or do we have to put an 'or' there? How do we make sure the themes are.
J. Aughenbaugh: By the way, this region needs to go to this country.
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: Okay.
N. Rodgers: So many of them speak this language that you also need to negotiate that in.
J. Aughenbaugh: We want access to this port and, oh, by the way. You can't go ahead and cut off this group. It's painstaking.
N. Rodgers: Frankly, presidents have neither the time nor the patience for work like that.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: That is a special civil servant.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Diplomats are a special civil servant, because if you think that Anthony Blinken, who I think he's the current Secretary.
J. Aughenbaugh: He's the current Secretary of State, yeah.
N. Rodgers: I would be willing to bet that there are numerous times when and what he wants to do is leap to his feet and smack the crap out of the person he's talking to. Because they have just said something either so wildly offensive or so wildly ridiculous that it's a nonstarter. But, he has to sit there and say, this is part of the negotiation. They say something outlandish, I don't respond. They then say, well, maybe I'm being a little outlandish, and I say yes you are, and then we get to have a discussion. That's a whole skill set.
J. Aughenbaugh: You think about the talent you need to have to be able to go ahead and interpret something that is said publicly by another nation's diplomats, but to figure out what it actually means in reality, right?
J. Aughenbaugh: Russia says we need the Donbass region of the Ukraine.
N. Rodgers: Or we've been dropping nuclear weapon on Kiev and you're like, they're not going to drop a nuclear weapon on Kiev.
J. Aughenbaugh: But the secretary of state can't go head and say that publicly. Because then that puts Russia into a box or bind. Instead, he's got to come back with carefully worded. Russia, you can't do that. Then after the press conference, goes ahead and talks to his counterpart in Russia to discuss what really needs to go on so that this whatever is going on in Ukraine is going to end.
N. Rodgers: Well, and the other thing that I think that we miss sometimes with secretaries of state is that there are also things they just simply can't do. They're not allowed by American law to do certain things. They have to stay within the confines of American law. They can't break American law to solve a tree, that's not all. The ending this would be, we would just give you new Jersey. Fine we'll just do that. They can't do that. Like I just said, we're going to require men or we're going to go to war with you. They can't just say, well, we don't really care about men anyway, so go ahead and take it like firstly of all, they care about men, everybody cares about men, men is lovely. Lots of chapters. You know what I mean like they can't? That's not part of American law that they have any power over. They have to negotiate within that, and so do all the other diplomats in other countries. They can threaten whatever they want. But if they're not in charge of whatever that thing is, they can't do it. It's all very fascinating too.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Again, we tend to focus on a single president or prime minister as the case may be. But at the end of the day, listeners if you take nothing else from this podcast episode. State Department officials, nameless, faceless bureaucrats.
N. Rodgers: We have enormous respect for those people.
J. Aughenbaugh: They went to school, they learn the language, they learn the customs, the culture. They are the representation of the United States to the rest of the world?
N. Rodgers: Yes. We want them to be the best of the best.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. We want them to understand that no matter what the US foreign policy is of a particular day, we want them to be able to go ahead and represent the country to the rest of the world.
N. Rodgers: Which is why it infuriates me that they are no longer as powerful a group as they work. Because they negotiated the end of World War II. Whether you think how that was done was wise or not, that was super complicated and it took a long time. Then immediately they're faced with a cold war between the United States and Russia. Now, they're trying to negotiate that delicate relationship, I'm sorry, my mind immediately leaps to the Cuban Missile Crisis. How that's a diplomatic because you have Russia on one side saying we're going to put missiles in Cuba. You have Kennedy on the other side saying, heck you are. What that required was a lot of back door phone call. How can we make sure that these things don't happens?
J. Aughenbaugh: What's interesting here is starting with President Kennedy, the State Department began to have less of a role in US foreign policy.
N. Rodgers: It shifted to Robert Kennedy, he didn't need Attorney General and other people in the administration.
J. Aughenbaugh: Kennedy basically relied upon trusted advisors in the White House, Bobby Kennedy, and a handful of others. Because from Kennedy's perspective, the State Department, much like the Department of Defense and the CIA were entrenched in their thinking. The Cuban Missile Crisis required different types of thinking.
N. Rodgers: I would argue, in fact that if the diplomatic core had been involved in the Cold War, that it might not have gone on until Reagan. Like I mean Kennedy, that's it. There's another 20 years of this mess. That's a foreign policy argument that we can have at another time in dark savages.
J. Aughenbaugh: What's really interesting is to your point, what you begin to see with Nixon and Ford basically relied upon the National Security Council, particularly a single person, Henry Kissinger.
N. Rodgers: How did he become?
J. Aughenbaugh: First he was Secretary of State, but then he became a chairperson of the National Security Council.
N. Rodgers: Okay.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, that idea of the National Security Council was the head of the National Security Council would report directly to the president and would be responsible for managing and coordinating the State Department, the Department of Defense, the CIA so to force those rather three potent agencies to work together. Because the concern was left to their own devices, they're going to engage in bureaucratic politics. They're going to protect their turf and they're not going to work with one another. But in the process, the one department that probably suffered the most with the emergence of the National Security Council was the State Department. Because successive presidents began to rely pretty exclusively on the National Security Council system. You see this pretty prominently with Bush 41. Now, by all accounts, Bush 41 put together an excellent foreign affairs staff. It was Bush 41 that we saw the end of the Cold War. The Berlin Wall came down. The Berlin Wall came down. But nevertheless, the State Department was not the most prominent department or agency in US foreign policy making.
N. Rodgers: Even though Secretary Baker was a personal friend and rather powerful individual, but we don't see the power of the agency.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. That's correct.
N. Rodgers: Because we've had some pretty powerful, not powerful, but maybe charismatic or maybe, I don't know exactly how to describe it.
J. Aughenbaugh: No, no. I think powerful were effective Secretaries of State.
N. Rodgers: Madeleine Albright comes to mind.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, Condoleezza Rice.
N. Rodgers: Condoleezza Rice, another.
J. Aughenbaugh: James Baker with Bush 41. But the department overall begins to lose its prominence. In some would argue, that's somewhat of a shame because again, we have State Department officials stationed around the world.
N. Rodgers: I think it's a shame we don't utilize them as much as we could because they are highly trained individuals. You're not in charge of an embassy, you're not the console in a country just randomly. That's the diplomatic corps. You start low and you work your way up. You get to those positions by learning how to do those jobs in very intense ways. You go from countries that are friendlier to countries that are unfriendly or as you work through your way through your career so that you build this incredible skill set. It's too bad to me that, I say this with all my heart for DHS. But the cool kid on the block isn't necessarily the right answer in every situation.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or the new kid, yeah, as the eagle song once said, the new kid in town is not always the best kid. The old standby might get replaced, but the new kid may not necessarily be the best fit. But to your point, starting in 1924 when Congress passed the Rogers Act, the Department of State, created what's known as the foreign service system. They made merit, not politics, the basis for appointment and promotion.
N. Rodgers: You didn't have to know a guy. You had to be good at your job.
J. Aughenbaugh: It took a couple of generations. But the State Department moved away from White Anglo-Saxon Protestant elites. Being the only individuals in prominent State Department positions too who had the best education, who had the best training, who had the knowledge of particular areas, who was on some desk in some backwater country in blah-blah-blah, part of the world, but demonstrated that they were a good Foreign Service agent.
N. Rodgers: They could solve problems diplomatically and write down the solution to everyone's satisfaction.
J. Aughenbaugh: They could pay attention to what was going on in that country. They help the United States avoid a Foreign Service problem or crisis. That arose with the Rogers Act in 1924. Post World War II, the Hoover Commission went ahead and reorganize the State Department to focus more on geographical desk. We need to have a unit in this part of the world or that part of the world, etc. In many ways, the State Department, because it's been reorganized because of changes in personnel system, we get a more representative, State Department, and listeners.
N. Rodgers: Efficient.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's much more efficient. We start getting more people of color and women in positions other than clerical responsibilities. But it took some time. Unfortunately, Nia as you pointed out, post 911, the State Department is now, if you think about the pecking order of US foreign policymaking, it's in competition with one, the National Security Council, two the State Department, three, the Department of Homeland Security. Let's not forget the longstanding rivalry between the State Department and the CIA.
N. Rodgers: For information gathering.
J. Aughenbaugh: Information gathering.
N. Rodgers: Because State Department was ideally positioned to gather information.
J. Aughenbaugh: It has been gathering intelligence the longest. Any department in our federal government?
N. Rodgers: Probably since TJ. I would imagine he made notes about who was who and who. See the thing about it is that, what I love about agencies, excuse me, about embassies and counsels and things like that in other countries is they live there.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: They know. I'm not going to try to be ugly here, but I'm going to try to be honest. They know who's sleeping with who, they know who's fighting with who, they know, who's mama hate to whose mama. They know all that stuff because they live there. They go to the market and they go to the bank and they go to all these different places where the overhear oh, he's got a young girlfriend on the side. We see her sometimes in the marketplace. Then they're like, Oh, who knew a guy had a chip? Now, you know a thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: You know a thing, you live there. You take note of who's showing up at State dinners.
N. Rodgers: Where do they sit?
J. Aughenbaugh: Where they sit.
N. Rodgers: Which is huge. How far are they from leader? They used to be right next to him, but now they're at the other end of the table. Oh, oh. It's trouble in paradise.
J. Aughenbaugh: Who's not getting invited to the State dinners now, which means they've lost status or rank.
N. Rodgers: Yeah.
J. Aughenbaugh: They gain within that country's political and government leadership.
N. Rodgers: The CIA isn't always well-placed to know that because it depends on how long they've had an agent there.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah right. A lot of diplomacy is paying attention to cultural norms and patterns of behavior that most of us on a daily basis would be like, "Oh, there's a new person, oh man." But the State Department would be like, "Yes, there is a new person."
N. Rodgers: Where did this person come from?
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: Which is why State Department officials in Russia, we're not surprised by Putin.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: They knew Putin was coming, the rest of the world was like, "Who is this Putin dude?" Because he hadn't really been nationally known. But the people who knew him in Moscow or Orlando, that guy's an up-and-comer.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, it's right.
N. Rodgers: That's the kind of thing. Also, I think the State Department officials in a country are the first people to know whether it's going to be unstable soon. They are the first people to be able to say we need to get all the Americans out of here because it's about to be ugly and we want to protect. That's why you see those orders. I would encourage people and I'm going to link to it the State Department website.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Has a fantastic history of the State Department. It also has things like the alerts about different countries and what you need to know before you travel the world. They will tell you if a country is perhaps not quite so friendly to Americans right now and you might want to rethink your summer break travel plans. They do that kind of thing. There are very hands in agency. They're not super mysterious about the kind of information they give out.
J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners, if you ever travel overseas and or you're thinking about traveling overseas, one of the first websites I would tell you to go ahead and check is the State Department.
N. Rodgers: Also don't they issue passports? The issuing agency for Pat? I think they are.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. I think they are at women. We're both now scrambling to go ahead and check this.
N. Rodgers: We are because we're curious about.
J. Aughenbaugh: Issues, passports. The Department of State?
N. Rodgers: Yeah, It is the Department of State. Good. We were both remembering correctly and then second-guessed ourselves. But yeah. They are responsible for your safety in that sense. They give you a passport and then they try to give you information about where to go, where not to go. There are places where they will say, "Do not go here, we cannot get you out if you go." If you go to Iran and you go up into the hills because you want to meet the lovely people who live in the hills of Iran, we may or may not be able to extract you from that region.
J. Aughenbaugh: In Listeners, if you do travel overseas and you do run into some legal difficulties, while you're traveling overseas you're going to want to know.
N. Rodgers: The phrase you need to learn in any foreign language for any country you're going to visit is where's the American Embassy?
J. Aughenbaugh: Embassy. That's right.
N. Rodgers: Or can you take me to the American Embassy?
J. Aughenbaugh: I want to meet with a US embassy representative and at that point say, "I will say nothing else."
N. Rodgers: They are basically your international first lawyer. You're going to get in there and try to help you. We love the State Department. I would love to see someone as flashy is like Seward to come in but I don't know if we do that anymore. If our government officials are really flashy like that.
J. Aughenbaugh: The US federal government has become so President centered.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. They probably wouldn't appoint or ask for someone to be approved who was too flashy because then it would take away from there.
J. Aughenbaugh: You've got to think about some of our more recent presidents who have appointed really effective and well-known Secretaries of State. These are presidents who generally are very comfortable in their own skin and have no problem sharing the limelight. When Bill Clinton appointed Madeleine Albright, nobody ever thought that Bill Clinton suffered or had a lack of ego.
N. Rodgers: Of all the things, that is not a thing to last.
J. Aughenbaugh: Bush 41 was the former director of the CIA.
N. Rodgers: Yeah, he was completely comfortable in his own skin, so having James Baker was just a plus.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, and Bush 43, he quite even to this day he's willing to acknowledge that he had a whole bunch of people in his cabinet who are smarter than him, and he was cool with that.
N. Rodgers: Oh, coming from basis brilliant.
J. Aughenbaugh: From his Vice President Dick Cheney to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, quite obviously he was, yeah, I'm good. But that requires a certain type of personality.
N. Rodgers: It does and you have to get out of their way and let them do their jobs.
J. Aughenbaugh: Jobs.
N. Rodgers: Which is also hard for some Presidents. Some presidents are micromanagers and they want to.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nia you and I had this conversation in a previous podcast episode with our colleague Bill Newman. Presidential personality can have a huge impact on whether or not the presidents will allow their cabinet secretaries to do the job. Some are willing or able to concede the limelight.
N. Rodgers: It's either not constitutionally in there or they view the presidency as the center of the universe and everything should revolve around it.
J. Aughenbaugh: We sometimes make that mistake as the public, the media certainly does.
N. Rodgers: What's the President thinking about that. Who cares?
J. Aughenbaugh: What's the President's foreign policy?
N. Rodgers: Turns out you should be asking the State Department.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, that's right okay.
N. Rodgers: Hopefully.
J. Aughenbaugh: I really enjoyed this conversation and in doing the research, I was reminded of how the State Department initially had domestic duties and we tend to forget that. Department says institutions are created to do certain kinds of work, but the institution will change over time.
N. Rodgers: Yeah.
J. Aughenbaugh: We saw this with the State Department and if I had to venture I guess Nia, we're probably going to see this with a number of other departments.
N. Rodgers: Oh yeah. Where they shift priorities. They reorganized, they change their scope.
J. Aughenbaugh: They were once prominent and now you would be hard-pressed to actually list them as one of the 15.
N. Rodgers: You have a tough time finding people who want to do the job. You want me to be what? No thank you.
J. Aughenbaugh: You want me to be the Secretary of Labor?
N. Rodgers: Do you have any idea what a pay cut that is for me and what a responsibility cut that is for me?
J. Aughenbaugh: We still have a Department of Labor?
N. Rodgers: Oh, Labor. We're just picking on you because we love you.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: We will be back with our next, and these will air in order we hope. But if they don't, this was the first.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: We will be back with the next one.
J. Aughenbaugh: Sounds good, Nia.
N. Rodgers: Thank you.
J. Aughenbaugh: Thank you.
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