“More than ever before, the State Department cannot afford to have ‘clientitis,’ a malady characterized by undue deference to the potential reactions of other countries. I have long thought the State Department needs an ‘America Desk.'”

It sounds like something uttered by the former speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, who obviously touched a nerve with his April 24 speech suggesting that the Bush administration “take on transforming the State Department as its next urgent mission.” In fact, however, those were the words of President Clinton’s first secretary of state, Warren Christopher, at his January 13, 1993 confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee. All of which simply underscores the point that there’s a bipartisan basis for going forward with Mr. Gingrich’s proposal for reforming the State Department. “America cannot lead the world with a broken instrument of diplomacy,” Mr. Gingrich said in that April 24 speech at the American Enterprise Institute. “America cannot help develop a vibrant world of entrepreneurial progress where countries grow into safety, health, prosperity and freedom for their people with a broken bureaucracy of red tape and excuses.” He was greeted with widespread derision, even from columnists who should know better.

Most remarkable — and telling — is the response that Mr. Gingrich got from the State Department. The assistant secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs, A. Elizabeth Jones, was quoted in Europe as saying that Mr. Gingrich’s remarks were”garbage.” “What Gingrich says does not interest me. He is an idiot and you can publish that,” she told the European press.

Ms. Jones — who, as an assistant secretary of state for all of Europe, has wide policymaking influence in the Bush State Department — is a career foreign service officer. That is, she’s a professional diplomat who’s served since 1970. She was born overseas to parents who were career foreign service officers. Among her previous jobs was service, in 1993 and 1994, as executive assistant to Secretary of State Christopher.

We’re not suggesting that all career foreign service officers are automatically suspect, or that the foreign service system should be scrapped entirely and replaced with a diplomatic corps made up entirely of political loyalists to the president. But some perspective is in order. According to the State Department Human Resource Office, as of March 30, there are a total of 10,017 full-time foreign service personnel. Against this President Bush — or a Democratic president like the one Mr. Christopher served — has perhaps a few dozen political appointees. Some of those appointments, alas, are used to reward campaign fund-raisers with ambassadorships in sunny climes, instead of on the Washington based jobs with real policy clout.

As Mr. Christopher and Mr. Gingrich both realize, foreign service officers sometimes lose sight of the fact that they work for the president of the United States. In the runup to Operation Iraqi Freedom, some of them publicly resigned to protest Mr. Bush’s policy. At least they deserve credit for having the courage to follow their convictions. Who knows how many others are staying in place yet quietly working to undermine the policies set by the president and the Congress? A serious inquiry by the relevant Congressional committees, as suggested by Mr. Gingrich, would help shed light on the problem and help show the way toward a solution that would help presidents and secretaries of state of both parties win control of an entrenched bureaucracy.