Posted on 11/06/2011 7:33:20 PM PST by AmericanInTokyo
The expression is “going native”. Lots of our State Department ambassadors and personnel go native. They start to identify more with the country they are posted to than with America
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ILLUS: George Shultz, when Secretary of State during the Reagan administration, kept a large globe in his office. When newly appointed ambassadors had an interview with him and when ambassadors returning from their posts for their first visit with him were leaving his office, Shultz would test them. He would say, “You have to go over to the globe and prove to me that you can identify your country.” They would go over, spin the globe, and put their finger on the country to which sent — unerringly.
When Shultz’s old friend and former Senate majority leader Mike Mansfield was appointed ambassador to Japan, even he was put to the test. This time, however, Ambassador Mansfield spun the globe and put his hand on the United States. He said: “That’s my country.”
On June 27, 1993, Shultz related this to Brian Lamb on C-Span’s “Booknotes.” Said the secretary: “I’ve told that story, subsequently, to all the ambassadors going out. ‘Never forget you’re over there in that country, but your country is the United States. You’re there to represent us. Take care of our interests and never forget it, and you’re representing the best country in the world.’ “ — Dr. Wallace Alcorn. From the files of Leadership.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:LJgY9bHIa04J:www.nnedaog.org/sermons/SERBAD2.HTM+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
This is confirmation of a wild thought I had once he jumped into the race and I took time to watch a few appearances and speeches.
Since ambassadorships are political appointments I find that hard to believe, but I have a friend in State and will ask.
Skimming through some previous US Ambassadors to Japan, about the only one I could see "going native" there would be Edwin O. Reischauer, since he had already done so for many years.
As someone once said (and it might have been the late Sen. Everett Dirksen): “The real problem with the State Department is that they need an ‘American Desk’ “ (sic)
R. Reagan & Jean Kirkpatrick; had said the same thing, many times.....
So Sorry, Bill and Hill beat you to it.
Perhaps she meant “Manchurian”.
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