After news of Nikki Haley’s resignation as the United States ambassador to the United Nations broke last month, one foreign diplomat I spoke with hesitated to weigh in on the impact of her departure. “We should wait and see who comes after her before we can judge,” they told me. “Her successor could be worse.” When it was reported Thursday that Heather Nauert, a Fox News host turned State Department spokesperson, is Donald Trump’s top choice to replace Haley in Turtle Bay, the response from the diplomatic community, while not exactly apoplectic, had a decidedly negative cast. “Going up to New York, she is just going to face a whole different set of challenges that she has evidenced no capability to navigate, let alone to know even where to start,” Brett Bruen, a former diplomat and White House director of global engagement under the Obama administration, told me, reflecting the widespread skepticism that Nauert’s résumé qualifies her for a job once held by the likes of Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick. “There is absolutely nothing that qualifies her for this post, aside from having delivered some talking points around foreign policy,” a former administration official told me. “It’s crazy to think people had misgivings about Nikki Haley’s qualifications. She was a foreign-policy pro compared to Nauert.”

But given the times, there was also a sense that the president could’ve done worse. “I don’t think it is a strong, substantive choice. . . . But I also don’t think it is a disaster,” a former high-ranking State Department official told me, noting that Nauert has garnered the respect of her colleagues in Foggy Bottom in her dual role as spokesperson and acting undersecretary of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, and boasts strong relationships with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his deputy John Sullivan. “If true that she is the choice, she won’t be as bad as many are speculating. In short, she can probably do the job, just won’t add gravitas to the position.”

In fact, Nauert’s lack of qualifications may be part of the plan. Three days after Haley tendered her resignation, Axios reported that National Security Adviser John Bolton, Chief of Staff John Kelly, and Pompeo didn’t want the next U.N. ambassador to hold Cabinet rank—a condition the former South Carolina governor insisted upon before she accepted the position. Notably, both Bolton and Kelly butted heads with Haley, who was known for her independent streak, a second former administration official told me. And as Richard Gowan, a senior fellow at the United Nations University, explained, this would send a clear message to U.N. ranks that Haley’s replacement “wields less clout.” Coupled with her lack of experience, the lack of Cabinet rank would leave Nauert in a subsidiary position. “From Pompeo and Bolton’s point of view, she is a good choice because she poses no substantive challenge to them. In past years, the U.S.U.N. Ambassador has had conflicts over policy approaches with [secretary of state] or N.S.C.,” the former State Department official explained. “Picking a far less experienced candidate, and one likely to defer to their authority, is likely something they’d be very happy with.”

That Nauert is the front-runner for the U.N. gig is not wholly surprising. On the heels of Haley’s resignation, White House aides were reportedly pushing for Trump to name a woman to fill the vacancy, the argument being that doing so could help the president shore up support among suburban women—a demographic the Republican Party is struggling to win over. The first former administration official also told me that there was a widely held view among diplomats that “Trump’s top priority was having a glamorous woman in the job,” though as far as stemming a potential blue wave, Terry Sullivan, who ran Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign, told me, “It will have almost zero impact on the midterms.”