A List That’s Short on Asian Americans

I doubt that much good will come out of all this campaign contribution brouhaha. After all the hearings, charges and countercharges have wound down, campaign financing will remain the loophole-ridden sewer that it always has been, the reeling Clinton administration will be too off-balance to show any real leadership in Asia and many Asian Americans will wind up tarred with a discriminatory brush bigger than China. What a deal.

Even now we are beginning to sense the outlines of the coming calamity. For starters, organizations such as the Japanese American Citizens League and the Organization of Chinese Americans fume as Asian Americans complain, understandably, that the current campaign-finance scandal focuses disproportionately on them. In Washington, Asian American lawyers and lobbyists are beginning to feel radioactive. As Asia Times correspondent David DeVoss recently reported, their calls to officials are not being returned and requests for meetings are being sidelined.

Now there’s another problem. It involves the key State Department position of assistant secretary for Asia. Vacant since Jan. 17, this Washington job sits at the hub of a wheel whose spokes touch all the bureaucracies (including the Defense Department, the CIA and our embassies abroad) and all the little and big powers of Asia (including China and Japan). Put a Lilliputian in that job (formal title: assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs) and you diminish U.S. standing throughout Asia; but put a giant there and you add to U.S. stature.

Two candidates on the White House short list are Stanley Roth, a former National Security Council staffer, and Susan Shirk, a UC San Diego professor who’s director of the famed Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. Both are top-notch professionals. But there’s a serious hitch: Not one candidate on the short list is an Asian American.

I’m not arguing quota politics; let’s not fill the position solely on the basis of ethnicity. But the question fair-minded Americans should ask is: Are accomplished Asian Americans not making the cut precisely because of their ethnicity?

“Oh, you mean, offer the job to John Huang?” joked one official in Washington. The jest says it all: Right now no one is going to propose an Asian American for any top job. “Besides,” said the official, “it’s really hard to find Asian Americans who have a deep interest and expert knowledge in Asia.”

Oh, really? I cranked up the fax machine and queried sources here and abroad. Can you nominate, I asked, a qualified Asian American figure, knowledgeable about Asia (I didn’t have to add: and who did not contribute to Clinton’s campaign)? No problem. Lots of candidates. What’s wrong with former U.S. trade negotiator Glen Fukushima, now an AT&T; executive in Tokyo? Heck, this Stanford and Harvard graduate has written more books and articles on Asia than almost anyone in the Clinton administration has even thumbed through.

Or knock on the door of the Brookings Institution in Washington and ask to see Mike Mochizuki, the internationally respected Japan expert. Or ring up Daniel Okimoto, the widely admired director of the Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford. Another standout candidate would be career foreign service officer William Itoh, the ambassador to Thailand who impressed Clinton’s people in a brief National Security Council stint.

Take a look, too, at politically astute California Treasurer Matt Fong, just back from scouring Asia for California pension-fund investment opportunities. (Sure, he’s a Republican--all the better!) Not quite gravitas enough? Then how about noted scientist Chang-Lin Tien, who as the former chancellor at UC Berkeley is well versed in matters Asia. And don’t forget Ko-Yung Tung, Pac Rim point man at O’Melveny & Myers, Warren Christopher’s law firm.

Suggests Charles Kim, executive director of the Korean American Coalition, “The fund-raising scandal plays a big part. I think they [the White House] don’t know how to handle the matter. It’s become a hot potato. It’s not Clinton himself, it’s his staff.” Agrees former State Department official Robert Manning, now at the Washington-based Progressive Policy Institute, “Why is it that no one is pushing an Asian name?” Adds Lucie Cheng, a UCLA professor and publisher of the Taiwan daily newspaper Lih Pao: “It’s ridiculous. I mean, if Susan Shirk is on the short list, and I’m not saying she’s isn’t very good, then there should be some Asian Americans on that list.”

Quota politics aside, why not just give the job to a qualified Asian American? That would underline the administration’s commitment to Asia and vaporize the absurd and demeaning cloud over Asian Americans. Moreover, it would suggest that Clinton really believes he has nothing to feel guilty about, as he repeatedly insists, with his campaign fund-raising, though it did snare in the fishy net some inappropriate foreign Asian money.

Muses Rep. Howard Berman (D-Los Angeles): “It is a real good idea--too bad it hasn’t occurred to anybody in the White House.”

Why not? It’s not too late. Is it?