One of the things I admired most about murdered US Ambassador Chris Stevens — a man whom I never met — was that he understood the importance of getting out and about. It is a characteristic that — despite the howls of protest that sometimes emerge from the Foreign Service whenever its officers feel besmirched — is sorely lacking in the State Department today. One of the reasons why the State Department is woefully bad at gauging the mood on the street or predicting events is that its diplomats remained trapped in the elite bubble, if not within the walls of embassies itself.
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