Obama Donor Quits Envoy Job

How hard is it to be the ambassador to Luxembourg? Cynthia Stroum, a businesswoman whose financial backing of Obama landed her the gig, found it pretty difficult. She quit amid a firestorm of criticism after a one-year tenure crammed with personal conflicts, verbal abuse, and questionable expenditures on travel and liquor. Stroum resigned days before a scathing State Department report came out, saying that “The reality is that I now need to focus on my family and personal business.” The report details her toxic relationship with the embassy staff: She publicly criticized them, fired those who criticized her, and at one point threatened to read their emails. She was also more concerned with the perks of being a diplomat than with her duties, sending two staffers on a search for better housing that took them to 30 or 40 properties (she rejected the four that met her requirements). She also listed a trip to a Swiss “professional a school” to find a replacement for a fired chef as a “management meeting,” and was reimbursed for a new bed because she “preferred a queen bed to the king-sized bed already provided.”