President Biden’s selection of L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti as the next U.S. ambassador to India makes sense all around. Let the next chapter begin.
India? Yeah, that was my first reaction when I heard a couple months ago that Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti might be President Biden’s pick for ambassador to India. He’s got Mexican and Italian blood. His maternal grandparents were Russian Jewish immigrants. So like I was saying… India? But after thinking about it and talking to some foreign policy people, I changed my mind. It’s not a bad choice for Biden, who made it official Friday in naming Garcetti to the post, pending U.S. Senate confirmation. It’s not a bad choice for Garcetti, who has been an elected city official since 2001, the last eight as mayor. He’ll be walking away from a job that hasn’t been finished, but it’s not like it would get finished in the 18 months he has left in his term. And it’s not a bad deal for Los Angeles, which could really, really use a leadership change. So let’s talk about three things here, all on the assumption that Garcetti gets the green light, despite developing City Hall scandals that could conceivably put the kibosh on the mayor’s escape from L.A. Why India? What’s Garcetti’s legacy? And what next for Los Angeles? I’m convinced, based on watching Garcetti in action for two decades, that he grew up wanting to be president of the United States. Critics aside, and he has many, I know him to be extremely intelligent and well versed on just about every public policy topic he has ever handled. A Rhodes scholar, Garcetti’s training in 2013 and service as a U.S. Naval reserve officer affirmed my suspicion that from the time he had his first bowl of Wheaties, Garcetti wanted to be president of the United States, and his career in public service was partly about polishing the resume. You’ll recall, I’m sure, that he spent months considering a run for president in the last election. But that didn’t work out. And then we all thought that out of loyalty to Biden, for whom he was a national campaign co-chair, his prize would be a Cabinet post. And when that didn’t happen, we were down to a possible appointment to diplomatic service. It’s quite a comedown, in a sense. But a foreign policy expert, Alyssa Ayers, was nowhere near as surprised as I was about Biden considering Garcetti for India. “Having a skilled manager with public sector experience makes a lot of sense for a mission of this size,” said Ayers, dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University and an adjunct at the Council on Foreign Relations.
