The endless Biden-Cruz staring contest

Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With Allie Bice and Daniel Lippman. And while there are reasons for that delay — including Sen. TED CRUZ’s (R-Texas) hold on more than a dozen State Department nominees — some in the foreign policy world, including former diplomats and foreign service members, see it as an embarrassment for Biden. “It’s starting to hurt us internationally. No other country in the world does this and increasingly the world is losing patience with our peculiarities, because in some cases we haven’t had an ambassador — for example, Singapore, for over five years,” a senior American diplomat with close ties to the White House told us. “Nobody really cares what our excuses are. It’s a sign of disrespect.” For months, the White House has been hearing from concerned officials like the above about the backlog. The fact that they haven’t been able to get around the gridlock has led to a fair amount of finger pointing. And, more often than not, those fingers are being extended to the Texas senator. He wants Biden to impose sanctions that would halt Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Europe. And he’s using his power to put a hold on nominees for State Department as well as Treasury jobs to make his point, frustrating the White House to no end. While the New York Times earlier this month reported that Cruz was holding up “59 would-be ambassadors,” the Senate executive calendar shows he’s currently holding up seven ambassador nominations from advancing to a floor vote. Senate Democrats could still bring them to a vote, but the process would be much more time consuming, eating into an already packed Senate calendar. And Cruz can use the same stall tactics for dozens of other would-be ambassadors who are still working their way through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Behind the scenes, there has been at least one effort by the White House to reach out to Cruz about the holds, two sources with direct knowledge told West Wing Playbook. According to a source familiar with the call, Cruz spoke with national security adviser JAKE SULLIVAN on Aug. 10. The discussion went “badly,” the source said. Sullivan asked the Republican senator if he would be willing to move the nominations, and Cruz responded that the Biden administration is legally mandated to impose sanctions. But the Biden administration made clear, the source said, that sanctions wouldn’t be imposed during his presidency. But there’s also this sticky detail, reported for Insider by BRETT BRUEN, a frequent Biden basher and a former Obama State Department official: “According to senior officials I’ve spoken to at the State Department, Secretary Antony Blinken only this week advanced to the White House a long list of career diplomats set to take over ambassadorships,” Bruen wrote in a column on Sept. 26. In an interview with West Wing Playbook, Bruen suggested that the Biden administration has prioritized political nominees over career diplomats, not just with respect to ambassadorships but senior jobs at the State Department and the National Security Council as well. The American Foreign Service Association’s ambassador tracker shows that of the ambassador nominees the White House has announced thus far, 26 are career officials and 38 have political backgrounds. The AFSA counts retired foreign service officers and civil service staffers as political appointees. We asked the White House about the notion that the administration has moved slowly to advance the nominations of career diplomats, and they did not immediately offer a response. But a White House aide noted that “obstruction by Senate Republicans” is causing substantially longer delays. Biden’s nominees for ambassadorships have been waiting 98 days on average since being nominated. Under Trump, nominees waited 77 days, and under Obama, nominees waited an average of 66 days. The White House also said the administration has nominated more ambassadors in the first 100 days than its immediate predecessors — 69 compared to 51 under Trump and 81 under Obama. “It’s long past time for Senator Cruz to get out of the way and let the Senate quickly confirm these national security nominees so they can advocate for the interest of the American people around the world,” White House rapid response director MIKE GWIN said in an email. BILL GALSTON, a former Clinton administration domestic policy official who is a senior fellow at Brookings Institution, downplayed the ambassador vacancies, since the embassies are being temporarily led by very competent career employees. “But that makes the representation of the United States less forceful and effective than it would be with a confirmed ambassador, who not only enjoys the trust and confidence of the president, but also of the United States Senate,” Galston said. “I don’t want to blow this up into a huge crisis for governing the country or relating to the world, but it is one more difficulty for a country that is already swimming in a sea of difficulties abroad.” Do you work in the Biden administration? Are you in touch with the White House? Are you MYLES MANN, associate director of confirmations? FIRST IN WEST WING PLAYBOOK — PAIGE HILL is leaving the White House where she has served as senior regional communications director, three people familiar with the matter told DANIEL LIPPMAN. She led an office which has so far facilitated more than 1,000 interviews of White House and administration officials with local and regional outlets. One source said Hill is heading to SKDK to be a VP in their Washington office. COLD SHOWER: FiveThirtyEight’s polling average has Biden’s approval at 44.6 percent and disapproval at 49.6 percent. “A FOREIGN POLICY BUILT FOR WOMEN” – JOIN US THURSDAY FOR A WOMEN RULE CONVERSATION: Building a foreign policy agenda with women at the center has shown that it can advance broader social, economic and political goals. It also requires having women in influential decision-making positions. Join POLITICO Magazine senior editor Usha Sahay for a joint conversation with Ambassador Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley, the State Department’s chief diversity and inclusion officer, and Ambassador Bonnie Denise Jenkins, undersecretary for arms control and international security, focused on the roadblocks preventing more women from rising through the ranks of diplomacy and why closing the foreign policy gender gap matters. REGISTER HERE. “With just over 10 weeks until Christmas, the White House is leaning heavily on port operators, transportation companies and labor unions to work around the clock unloading ships and hauling cargo to warehouses around the country,” Overly writes. Vice President Kamala Harris is scheduled to speak at 3:25 p.m. ET tomorrow at the “2021 Global Inclusive Growth Summit” hosted by Mastercard and the Aspen Institute. He signed into law H.R. 2278, which formally designates the September 11th National Memorial Trail Route, a route that connects the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the Flight 93 Memorial; and S. 848, which modifies the service obligation verification process for TEACH Grant recipients and extend the service obligation window due to Covid-19. THE MILKEN INSTITUTE GLOBAL CONFERENCE 2021 IS HERE: POLITICO is excited to partner with the Milken Institute to produce a special edition "Global Insider” newsletter featuring exclusive coverage and insights from one of the largest and most influential gatherings of experts reinventing finance, health, technology, philanthropy, industry and media. Don’t miss a thing from the 24th annual Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles, from Oct. 17 to 20. Can't make it? We've got you covered. Planning to attend? Enhance your #MIGlobal experience and subscribe today. JWOWW posted a picture of the band on Instagram — which included McCarthy on the piano — writing in a caption that she “couldn’t have asked for more beautiful music for our ceremony.”