Pompeo has a lot of work to do to rebuild State Department

In explaining his decision to replace Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Tuesday morning, President Donald Trump noted that he and Tillerson did not see "eye to eye" on a number of issues.

Moments later, in discussing the possibility of Larry Kudlow coming on to be the new director of the National Economics Council, the President said that he and Kudlow did not agree on everything but that he liked having people around him with different opinions. The irony should not be lost on anyone.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo will now be nominated to be the new secretary of state and will face Senate confirmation. The president will want to move quickly. The Senate, being the Senate, will move at its own pace. This all comes as the president is preparing for a possible summit with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un.

Over the past four decades, the making of America's foreign policy has increasingly been centralized in the White House. When Henry Kissinger took over the National Security Council in January 1969, he ultimately increased the size of its staff from a dozen to 34. Today, the NSC has between 300 and 400 staffers and has become America's primary foreign policy shop.

Given the fact that Washington is rife with rumors that NSC Advisor H.R. McMaster is also rumored to be on his way out, the shake-up in the President's foreign policy team might not be over, but as the president has explained in an interview with commentator Laura Ingraham, "I'm the only one who matters".

Indeed, the president has apparently run foreign policy in his administration much the way he ran his relatively small, family-run real estate business in New York - he decides. This takes the centralization of foreign policy to a level that we have not seen in American history.

So, what will Mike Pompeo's job be as Secretary of State? America's best secretaries of state do two fundamental jobs. First, they travel, keeping up an ongoing conversation with both our friends and our adversaries. Rarely are there instantaneous breakthroughs in diplomacy. Progress is made by understanding your goals and your interlocutor, and pushing constantly toward the desired end at many levels.

Second, secretaries of state should speak almost constantly, giving voice to America's goals and policies - educating, advocating and defending those policies. But more than that, secretaries of state should give voice to America's most closely held beliefs and values because our policies should reflect those values.

A review of State Department archives shows that Tillerson spoke far less often than his predecessors and what he said rarely made a dent in our increasingly tumultuous news cycle. There is a lot of reporting that suggests that Tillerson was increasingly ignored because foreign leaders did not believe he spoke for the president. In theory, the appointing of Pompeo should remedy that to a degree.

Pompeo will have another more immediate job when he takes over at Foggy Bottom and that will be to win over a Foreign Service and Civil Service staff that has felt under siege by this administration.

Tillerson defended a nearly 30 percent cut in the department's budget, wasted a year on a management study that now will probably not be implemented, and - as a result - left vacant dozens of senior positions in the department even as many of America's most experienced diplomats were either forced out or left in frustration.

We have no Ambassador nominated for South Korea at this delicate moment, and in the volatile Middle East, there are no nominees for ambassadors to Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Yemen.

Not only the senior ranks - equivalent of General Officers in the military - have been impacted. In 2016, the State Department took in 366 new officers. Last year the number was 100, owing to a hiring freeze imposed by Tillerson. Moreover, the number of people taking the rigorous Foreign Service exam has fallen by more than 50 percent. Foreign Service careers have always attracted the best and brightest, but many are shunning this administration.

As the president has said, he will decide the policy, but the State Department will implement that policy using its expertise and experience. Both have been severely damaged under Tillerson's time as secretary. It will now be up to Pompeo to reverse that dangerous and destructive course.

Keith Peterson, of Lake Barrington, served 29 years as a press and cultural officer for the United States Information Agency and Department of State. He was chief editorial writer of the Daily Herald 1984-86.