David Wade is the founder of Greenlight Strategies, a consulting firm focused on global markets, and was chief of staff to the U.S. Department of State during the Obama administration.

On Monday, coupled with the launch of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s Instagram account, the State Department launched a campaign rebranding itself the “Department of Swagger.”

Replete with a composite photo of William Shakespeare, Gen. George S. Patton and Pompeo (because the Bard and Old Blood and Guts all had #swagger, apparently. Who knew?) and a PhotoShopped State Department seal now ringed by the words DEPARTMENT OF SWAGGER, the not-so-soft relaunch is the diplomatic version of New Coke. Put aside the fact that the department’s catchphrase sounds more like a product line of Old Spice deodorant than a label for a venerated institution that’s been led by American icons from Thomas Jefferson to Dean Acheson. Yes, it’s a long strange trip from “present at the creation” to “swagger.”


The new slogan is the latest indication that the administration is misdiagnosing State’s real problems: understaffing and under-resourcing to the point of wholesale dysfunction, the damage to America’s reputation in the world and a five-letter millstone dragging down our diplomats that’s spelled T-R-U-M-P. #Swagger misdiagnoses one problem—a hollowed out civilian force—and exacerbates another: managing the perception of arrogance and reckless unilateralism.

#Swagger sounds like a tagline on a Cialis commercial. To run the State Department, it takes a village—not Viagra. And right now at the State Department there is not even a small village. Forty out of 100 major management jobs are vacant, and five of six undersecretary positions are unfilled by Senate-confirmed appointees. We don’t even have nominees for ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, Pakistan or Australia. Anything happening in those countries where you might want a chief of mission?

And the problems at Foggy Bottom go far beyond hiring. The State Department budget is still less than 5 percent of the military’s, and the number of development officers worldwide is less than a third the number of soldiers in a single Army division. Past presidents, from Reagan to Obama, tried to rectify this, despite the public disapproval for spending money overseas. Not this administration. Pompeo’s boss has never met a diplomatic line item he didn’t want to cut—proposing a 27 percent cut to the department’s budget in his first year in office. The inspector general has widened an investigation into political retaliation by Trump administration officials against career diplomats. White House worries about the “deep state” keep career officers on the sidelines, out of important meetings. No wonder State has seen half of the most senior career officers depart, the civilian equivalent of three- and four-star generals, a comparison you don’t need Patton’s swagger to appreciate.

Corny hashtags aren’t the answer to these problems; actions are required for the department to get its groove back. Diplomats crave an organization in which professionals aren’t stuck in limbo, not knowing whether they’ll pass a loyalty test to earn a nomination for their next post, trapped in “acting” positions, saddled by vacancies and disempowered when they meet their foreign interlocutors. Secretary Pompeo can take a page out of another Republican secretary’s book and trade in the hashtags for herculean efforts to defend the building’s equities: Colin Powell warned that a secretary’s No. 1 job is to take care of the men and women of the foreign service the same way the Army prepares promising privates for a long, lasting career in uniform.

Second, while messaging is not the answer, it can certainly be part of the problem—and it might be in the case of #Swagger. Even benign statements in diplomacy can spark unintended reactions; the last administration’s framing of a “pivot to Asia” inadvertently worried traditional allies in Europe and Middle East partners who feared it meant the United States was pivoting “away” from them. But “swagger?” Swagger? What overseas audience is that message serving?

Typically, American leaders work to overcome misperceptions of American arrogance created by our preponderance of military and economic power. We work to shake the unfair image of “the ugly American,” which empowers despots and dictators to distract from their own vulnerabilities and reap propaganda victories for standing up to the United States. There’s a reason why even a past president associated with actual swagger (when President George W. Bush accepted his party’s nomination in 2004, he famously said “Some folks look at me and see a certain swagger, which in Texas is called ‘walking’”) wisely ran for president in 2000 promising a “humble foreign policy.” #Swagger turns that notion on its head. Only an administration that thought it was a good idea to revive the pre-World War II isolationist mantra “America First” would think it was a good idea to embrace the word “swagger” as the animating principle of its foreign policy. The perception of arrogance makes the job of diplomats only harder, when the work is already harder than ever.

Pompeo, like all secretaries of state, will ultimately be judged on substance, not slogans. There’s no one-size-fits-all model: Indeed, for years, incoming secretaries have been advised by former Secretary Powell that their job is to avoid travel, manage the bureaucracy and keep an eye on the White House—only to hear from former Secretary James Baker that power resides in a secretary’s unique ability to get out of the Situation Room, build deep relationships globally and play the role of negotiator-in-chief. Each secretary defines his or her role.

Pompeo operates in a complicated world and a dysfunctional Washington. Will he leave the department stronger than he found it? Alliances in better shape? Will he lead any diplomatic breakthroughs? Will he manage the inevitable crises that consume vast swathes of any secretary’s time? On North Korea, can Pompeo take the president’s platitudes and create a real strategy that relies on quiet regional diplomacy to ensure constant pressure on Kim Jong Un and doesn’t allow China to ease up on its client? (It would help to have an assistant secretary of state for Asia.) Venezuela spins out of control, and the only news the administration has made has been counterproductive: Trump gaffes galore implying he was considering an invasion, and more recent leaks about fomenting a coup, a propaganda gift to a thuggish President Nicolas Maduro.

Pompeo should rely on synergy, not swagger. In Latin America, for instance, he should look to regional players from Cuba to Brazil, Argentina to Mexico to help manage the Venezuelan meltdown. All of these countries have influence in Caracas, but remain alienated from the White House, and we don’t have ambassadors serving in Mexico City or Bogota. (Perhaps the Secretary of Swagger could pick up the phone and charm the Republican senators blocking the president’s ambassadorial nominee for Colombia, a revered career foreign service officer.)

The Pompeo team has a tough job. I don’t envy it. There’s a reason most diplomatic tweets, at best, read like press releases and, at worst, hostage videos: When Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy Richard Stengel and I worked together in 2014, diplomats warned us that public diplomacy officers are rewarded for not making mistakes, rather than for taking risks. Even well-intentioned experiments in internal communications can be fraught with risk: When my former boss, Secretary of State John Kerry, eschewed the traditional but strangely impersonal internal self-identifier of secretaries of state (“S”) on an all-staff email, in favor of his initials “JK,” some worried he meant “just kidding.” The Harry Truman Building can be a tough place to push the curve.

But #Swagger’s problems are far bigger than internal culture or diplomatic caution. Literally no one pines for the days of Rex Tillerson, but State Department professionals’ ongoing grievances are real, not rhetorical. Personnel is policy. Pompeo indicated he understood this when he reversed his predecessor’s disastrous hiring freeze, but I have no doubt that many of my old colleagues are raising eyebrows at this new PR blitz.

If Pompeo tackles his department’s real challenges, he can brag on social media all he wants. Until then, however, better to update the catchphrase of a different Republican exemplar: Speak softly, and put away the swagger stick.