Next week » Utah governor can expect tough questions
Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. should be prepared to answer some tough, probing questions when he goes before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee next week, but he will likely emerge unscathed, experts say.
“Given the nature of the committee, it’s going to be a piece of cake, I’m sure,” said Tom Korologos, who was an ambassador to Belgium in the last administration and has shepherded several nominees through the Senate confirmation process.
Huntsman will go before the Foreign Relations Committee Thursday as senators consider his nomination to be ambassador to China, one of the highest profile U.S. diplomatic positions.
The governor should be prepared to field a broad array of questions, on trade and currency, climate change and human rights issues, including Tibetan independence and the recent government crackdown on the Uighur population, which left nearly 200 dead. Other likely questions may be directed at China’s international role in Taiwan, North Korea, Russia, Pakistan, Iran and elsewhere.
“He’ll be asked the tough questions and if he’s as well informed and as bright as I’m led to believe he is, he’ll do well,” said Michael Haltzel, a former long-time Foreign Relations Committee staffer. “I just would be very, very surprised if this were highly confrontational or even unpleasant for him. I don’t want to use the word ‘love-in,’ but it could be.”
Huntsman also has the benefit of being a Republican nominated by a Democratic president, a point that Haltzel, now a senior fellow at the Center for Trans-Atlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins University, said would likely be lauded by GOP members on the committee.
The challenge Huntsman will face, Korologos said, is offering informed responses while sticking to the adminstration’s stated policy positions.
“He’s got to have all that in his head and what the policy positions are and the State Department’s China desk people are briefing him right now on various issues,” Korologos said. “He can’t freelance it, nor should he, nor will he.”
President Barack Obama announced that he was nominating Huntsman in mid-May and since then Huntsman has kept a low profile, splitting time between Utah and Washington, where he has attended policy briefings, met with senators and filled out a mountain of paperwork.
The White House finally sent Huntsman’s nomination to the Senate on July 6.
Haltzel said that the State Department is likely holding “murder boards” for the governor, a sort of mock hearing in which staff members pepper the nominee with anticipated questions to help the governor refine his answers.
Typically, a nominee for such high-profile positions is introduced by his home-state senators, and a spokeswoman for Sen. Bob Bennett said the senator plans to be there when Huntsman goes before the committee.
The chairman of the committee will generally give the nominee a chance to introduce his or her family and make an introductory statement before senators are given an opportunity to ask questions.
Assuming Huntsman is confirmed, Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert will take over as Utah’s 17th governor.
In 2001, it took the Senate two weeks to confirm President George W. Bush’s nominee, Clark Randt Jr., to the Chinese ambassadorship once the Foreign Relations Committee held its hearing.
However, the Senate is scheduled to leave for its summer recess starting Aug. 7, meaning if the full Senate doesn’t vote on Huntsman’s confirmation before then, he may not be confirmed until early September.
Korologos, however, says he anticipates Huntsman’s nomination will be complete before the August recess. “They’re expediting all of” the nominees, he said. That would give Huntsman a good opportunity to get settled into office during the recess, which is typically a time that most governments shut down.
Huntsman, who was re-elected by the largest margin of any governor in Utah history last November, has a history in Asia, serving as the deputy U.S. trade representative for the region early in President George W. Bush’s administration, and was ambassador to Singapore during President George H.W. Bush’s tenure.
Source:
The Salt Lake Tribune; By Robert Gehrke And Thomas Burr
