ROLL CALL: Obama’s Push for Political Ambassadors Reaching Lame-Duck Limit.

President Barack Obama won the latest round Tuesday, when senators voted almost straight down party lines to confirm two new diplomats whose most obvious calling cards were raising a combined $4 million to elect and re-elect the president. That would be Colleen Bell, a Hollywood soap opera producer who will now spend the next two years running the U.S. embassy in Budapest; and Noah Mamet, a public relations consultant who got his start as a fundraiser for House Democrats two decades ago and is off to take the corner office in Buenos Aires.

Starting next year, the advantage in the argument will go to the Republicans, because once they take over the Senate they’ll have total power to ignore into oblivion any diplomatic choice they view as unqualified.

The mystery is what happens in the next week. Beyond the big-ticket legislative items, Majority Leader Harry Reid is confronting a mountain of routine bills and nominations, knowing he can’t possibly get it all done even if he stretches the lame duck beyond Dec. 12. He’s not tipping his hand on how hard he’ll push for action on would-be ambassadors — although in the short time available the Nevada Democrat will have more success with the 13 career diplomats waiting in the wings than with the dozen political appointees.

By recent historic standards, Obama is starting to test the ceiling for putting friends and campaign supporters in U.S. diplomatic posts. Altogether, 35 percent of Obama’s assignments so far have gone to political people. But in his second term, the number has grown to 41 percent according to research by the American Foreign Service Association, the union representing career diplomats that would like more strict enforcement of a 1980 law that says campaign donations may not be considered a qualification for any foreign posting.

Well, I’d say that law is constraining Obama about as much as, well, all the others.