US Ambassador to the UN speaks at Wash U

Tonight I went to Graham Chapel to hear Jack Danforth, former Senator and partner at Bryan Cave in St. Louis, discuss his appointment by President Bush as the American Ambassador to the United Nations. I spent a good bit of time musing on the background of the Danforth family--his brother is our former chancellor and though retired and quite elderly, still very much involved in campus life (his wife has a dorm named after her, along with several coveted scholarships). The brothers are 5th generation Missourians and the very model of WASP gentlemen. Jack did Bill (Chancellor) one better and has a Princeton undergrad coupled with Yale divinity and law degrees. Then again, Bill was a Beta haha.

So ordained Episcopalian minister, law firm partner, senator, upper crust St. Louis society man Jack is the new Ambassador. Yes, I'm a bit jaded. His first anecdote went along the lines of:

before I could accept this position, I had to make sure it actually meant something, so I asked the President about the accusations that he liked to 'go it alone.' But the President told me that he was truly committed to multilateralism and expressed particular concern that we work on our relationship with France.

Complete, honest truth. Sigh.... Something tells me Jack will be out a job in January if Kerry is triumphant. He went on to discuss the situation in Darfur, Sudan in depth. However, according to my friend Catherine, summer intern policy wonk for the African bureau of the State Dept, many facts were simply wrong, including a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the African Union. And so American continues to bumble abroad, taking missteps in the areas of the world where we truly SHOULD intervene, instead plowing resources down the drain that has become Iraq--a drain we must plug, but now that we're there, it'll be a long, hard journey.