Some readers may have noticed that I italicize part of Judith McHale’s title, as in Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. I’ve done this for over year now to draw attention to a bureaucratic reality. While State’s organizational chart shows the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs – now P.J Crowley, Sean McCormack before him – reporting directly to the Under Secretary, the reality is something less (although I’m told the relationship between the A/S and U/S today is closer than it has been). The media and others tend to focus on the Under Secretary’s primary and most public job and almost always list the titled as simply “Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy.” But today, an odd thing happened, Elizabeth Dickenson of ForeignPolicy.com gave Judith McHale a new title:
Replying to an e-mail regarding a different article, the press office resent a statement, sent separately last week by Undersecretary of State for Public Affairs Judith McHale to FP, on the U.S.-Africom relationship …
Under Secretary for Public Affairs? I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that one before…
