Mark Henry Gitenstein – partner in Washington, coming from a prestigious law firm in Chicago, lobbyist for renowned corporations and donor to the Democratic Party – is President Obama’s choice for U.S. Ambassador to Romania. He will soon take over the position in Bucharest (vacant since October 2008) after confirmation from the Senate.
The announcement, which was also posted on the White House’s official website, was made on Thursday, along with the designations for other U.S. embassies in Belgium, Belize, Burundi, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, the Marshall Islands, Oman, Tanzania, Tunisia and Surinam. From all ten nominees, five of them are career diplomats and one of them is a general. Four of the men distinguished themselves through donations made to the candidates from the Democratic Party during the presidential campaign.
The very brief official description the White House gave about the new Bucharest ambassador refers strictly to his political activity. At the present, Gitenstein is a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution (one of the the oldest think-tanks in the U.S. capital).
Previously, for 17 years, he has been a close collaborator of Vice President Joseph Biden throughout his long career as a senator from Delaware. First, as an assistant in Biden’s office, then as counselor in the Senate’s Commission of Justice, Gitenstein was also a member of the team of counselors who prepared the new administration’s take over between November 2008 and January 2009.
About the part the public is really interested in, the White House makes only one comment – that Gitenstein is a partner at the law firm Mayer Brown LLP since 1989. The law office, founded in 1881 in Chicago, is one of the biggest of its kind in the world, with 1,800 attorneys (for a total of 3,400 employees) in 20 countries and a business revenue of 1.18 billion dollars in 2007. The company also represents lobbyist activities, but only for companies who are in the U.S.’ top 100. Consequently, Gitenstein made a name for himself as lobbyist for the United States Chamber of Commerce. He often represented the interests of big corporations in the areas of communications (AT&T), military technology (Boeing, Lockheed Martin) and financial services (Merrill Lynch – part of Bank of America, after the crisis).
The non-governmental organization Public Citizen sees Gitenstein’s lobby activities as having promoted a lack of transparency against ordinary Americans. As the Chamber of Commerce’s representative, the attorney supported laws which restrained a citizen’s possibility of suing big corporations and obtaining indemnities. Moreover, his professional profile infringes an order Obama signed on his very first day as president. On January 20, 2009, Obama ordered that former lobbyists can not be a part of his administration, foresight from which many of his later designations made an exception.
Due to pressures from Public Citizen, Obama gave up in February 2009 the naming of Gitenstein as director of the Judicial Politics Office in the Department of Justice, even though the press referred to him as being the only one named for the position. Had he occupied it, the former attorney would have had the power to influence the administration’s politics concerning the interests of clients from whom he received millions of dollars during the last decade.
“Gitenstein has a long record of championing laws to shield corporations from accountability at the expense of ordinary Americans,” was one of the objections Public Citizen made against the naming of Gitenstein for a high ranking position in the Department of Justice.
Additional Info
Between 2008 and 2009, as lobbyist for the United States Chamber of Commerce, Mark Gitenstein collected allowances worth over 6.4 million dollars. Compared to his income, his campaign donations are insignificant – $4000 for Vice President Joe Biden and $1,500 for Hillary Clinton – only because of the American legislation that strictly limits the total sums that can be given by one person. The status of “leading” donor is given to the one who uses his relations for attracting as many contributors as possible.
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