No concern about Foxie's confirmation


He’s good, old, generous "Foxie" to President Bush, he "represents what America is all about" to Joe Lieberman, and he’s a character assassin to John Kerry.

This man of many parts, Sam Fox, is a leveraged buyout mogul from St. Louis who wants to be ambassador to Belgium. His quest is being advanced by the president who appointed him and by Senator Lieberman (Bipartisan, CT), who made a special visit to Fox’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing to praise the ambassador-designate as the embodiment of the American dream. Kerry’s vision of Fox leans more toward the American nightmare.

Fox, Bush, Lieberman and Kerry are actors in one more episode in the long-running saga of how money corrupts our politics. Both the president and Lieberman, his main man in the Senate Democratic Caucus, have good reasons to help Foxie get to Brussels and Kerry has an even better reason to send him back to St. Louis.


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Fox joins generations of wealthy Republican and Democratic contributors to presidential campaigns who have been paid off with ambassadorships. These lightly qualified envoys are usually sent where they can do little harm, to nations like Belize, Singapore and the Bahamas. But it is also possible for those with especially generous hearts to land even more prestigious posts in places like France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain and the Vatican. These positions are usually bought for donations ranging from $100,000 to more than $1 million.

Foxie is well qualified for a prized post. In 2001, he hosted a record-setting Washington fundraiser that took in $21 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. He proudly wears the title "Republican Regent" as one of the truly elite group of donors who have given $250,000 or more to his president and party.

His hefty donations have served Fox well, but a smaller contribution of a mere $50,000 has proven embarrassing as he seeks the approval of the Democratic-controlled Senate. The $50,000 was given to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the Republican-financed front that viciously attacked presidential candidate Kerry’s Vietnam War record and surely contributed, along with Kerry’s tepid response, to his narrow defeat. The group was condemned by Republicans like Sen. John McCain, but never refuted by the Bush campaign.


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Fox squirmed a bit in his confirmation hearing as Kerry challenged his support for the Swift Boat group and explained he only gave "because I was asked to." He couldn’t remember who had asked him for the money and rather lamely confessed that he and his wife generally give to various causes when asked, without involving themselves in how the money is used. Kerry, as his custom, didn’t press the matter very much.

Kerry wasn’t around earlier in the day when Lieberman, who’s not a committee member, dropped by to predict that Fox "will be, when confirmed, an extraordinary ambassador."

Spending a few minutes to praise Fox was the least Lieberman could do. Although he doesn’t give to Democrats, Fox made kind of an exception the day after the 2006 election when he and his wife each gave $10,500 to the newly elected Independent Democrat from Connecticut.

In an e-mail to The Hartford Courant, Fox said his admiration for Lieberman had grown over the years. "I especially admire his views on foreign policy, Israel and the Middle East, which are in accord with my own, as he knows."

And Joe’s admiration for Foxie, fueled by that $21,000 post-election check, has apparently not been at all diminished by the nasty assault on the 2004 standard bearer of his sometime party by the Fox-financed Swift Boaters.

 

So, what’s to become of Fox? We know he’s got bipartisan Lieberman’s vote but Connecticut’s senior senator, Chris Dodd, said Tuesday he’d vote against Fox even though he usually believes presidents have a right to name their own appointees.

Neither party really wants to mess with its ancient and profitable practice of selling ambassadorships by maligning these great-hearted givers and so, despite his little problem, the betting was that Foxie would soon be Brussels bound, but it didn’t turn out that way. After the Foreign Relations Committee received a letter from Kerry’s fellow Swift Boat veterans and before the committee had a chance to vote on Wednesday, Fox withdrew.


 

Dick Ahles is a retired journalist living in Simsbury. E-mail him at dahles@hotmail.com.

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