CORRECTION: “UNEARNED SWAGGER.” Has the State Department Been Stripped of Its Swagger?

Two years into the Trump administration, dozens of ambassadorships remain vacant, with U.S. embassies doing business without a boss in the office.

And it’s not just ambassadorships. Back in Washington, the State Department’s top leadership ranks are riddled with empty offices. There is no chief financial officer. The undersecretary for democracy and human rights is operating without a Senate-confirmed nominee. The undersecretary for management, the person in charge of making sure the trains at Foggy Bottom run on time, is MIA. According to a running tally from the Washington Post , sixty-seven of the State Department’s 197 confirmed positions are without permanent officials, an astounding 34 percent.

Upon entering the department’s front door, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo promised to bring the “swagger” back to America’s diplomatic corps.

Staffing issues aren’t helping, certainly. But the post-Cold War period, particularly after 9/11, requires a State Department which is proactive, nimble, and most of all imaginative. Instead we’ve had a foreign policy establishment almost entirely dedicated to, well, the establishment. State has long been shorter on fresh thinking than it is on fresh butts in chairs.