Cassandra Butts, a Harvard classmate of Obama, who worked for the Obama White House, died recently of leukemia. She had been appointed by Obama as Ambassador to the Bahamas, but couldn’t be confirmed by the Senate.
The Human Cost of Gridlock “In early 2014, after decades of government and nonprofit work that reflected a passion for public service, Cassandra Butts got a reward — or so she thought,” writes New York Times columnist Frank Bruni:
She was nominated by President Obama to be the next United States ambassador to the Bahamas … .
The Senate held a hearing about her nomination in May 2014, and then … nothing. Summer came and went. So did fall. A new year arrived. Then another new year after that.
When I met her last month, she’d been waiting more than 820 days to be confirmed. She died suddenly two weeks later, still waiting. She was 50 years old.
The delay had nothing to do with her qualifications, which were impeccable. It had everything to do with Washington. She was a pawn in its power games and partisanship.
Bruni acknowledges that Butts — who also served as deputy White House counsel, a staff job not subject to the Senate’s consent — was a “close friend” of Obama’s. But we had to look up her Washington Post obituary to confirm that her untimely death (of previously undiagnosed leukemia) was unrelated to the Senate’s inaction.
Are our hearts really supposed to break because a friend of the president didn’t get to spend a couple of years in the Bahamas? What odd priorities Bruni has.
Welcome to another installment of No Obama Bundler Left Behind. This chapter stars an elite Hollywood fundraiser who scored a plum diplomatic appointment, slacked off on the job and left her public office in disgrace, and then rebounded from failure as a new Obamacare promoter. Nice crony "work" if you can get it.
This failed celebr-ambassador is Nicole Avant. Her father, Clarence Avant, is a prominent Democratic activist and music executive. Her husband, Ted Sarandos, is the chief content officer at Netflix. Her godfather is music legend Quincy Jones.
Ms. Avant is extraordinarily rich and well connected. She was also more than ordinarily useless as an Ambassador, and her terrible record in her job is why there was a vacancy for Obama to fill with another black female crony.
Here’s a suggestion for Obama — instead of looking for another black female with little or no diplomatic experience to head the American Embassy in the Bahamas, why not send a professional from the US State Department?
The actual duties of the Embassy are being carried out at the moment by a charge d'affaires, named Lisa A. Johnson, a lady who has been "posted overseas at U.S. Embassies in Beirut, Islamabad, Luanda, and Pretoria, and was seconded to the Private Office of the Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Brussels. Ms. Johnson has received the State Department’s Superior Honor Award and Meritorious Honor Award four times each."
Apparently Obama doesn’t think she’s qualified to be Ambassador to the Bahamas. As you can see, she’s white.
