President Obama greeting the emperor of Japan in 2010.
Photo: The Asahi Shimbun/Getty ImagesIt cannot be said that Capricia Penavic Marshall fails to practice the graciousness she advises. Other authors confine their I-Could-Never-Have-Succeeded-Without statements to an acknowledgments page at the end of the book, and she has nine of those. But throughout “Protocol: The Power of Diplomacy and How to Make It Work for You,” accolades are lavished on nearly everyone who is mentioned.
It seems that all the people with whom the author has worked are “incredible,” “brilliant,” “extraordinary,” “savvy,” “amazing,” “immensely talented,” “multitalented,” “gifted,” “remarkable,” “uber intelligent, compassionate, and supportive,” “profoundly revered,” “fun-loving and multitalented,” “incredibly successful,” “warm and gracious,” “beyond elegant,” “extremely skillful,” “dazzling,” “legendary” or “accomplished.” Perhaps the way to make her power of diplomacy work for you would be to hire all these people away from her. Nah—they’re probably immensely, extraordinarily and incredibly loyal, as well.
Protocol
By Capricia Penavic Marshall
Ecco, 424 pages, $28.99
This book is a hybrid: part White House memoir and part motivational pitch. Ms. Marshall, who served as chief of protocol in the Obama administration and social secretary in the Clinton administration, later joined the Bloomberg presidential campaign. She is now president of Global Engagement Strategies, advising clients about cultural aspects of business.
The most visible part of the job of the Office of Protocol of the State Department is to arrange and oversee ceremonial and social functions involving the president and his state visitors. Ms. Marshall offers anecdotes illustrating triumphs, near misses and the occasional flub, for which she graciously accepts blame while forgiving whoever was actually responsible.
There was the time she startled President Obama by advising him to join Chinese President Hu Jintao in a group noodle-making ritual. She writes that his doing so produced Chinese warmth toward the U.S.
But then there was the presidential meeting with Southeast Asian leaders, when the flag of the Philippines was mis-hung in such a way as to signal that that country was at war. She felt compelled to apologize effusively.
And there was the time when her president bowed to the emperor of Japan, even though she had given him a memo telling him that he was not supposed to engage in symbolic deference to a foreign chief of state. After calling this gesture “cringeworthy,” she speculates that although it was not well received in the States, it “likely enhanced the status of our country with the Japanese.”
The “You” in the subtitle is not likely to encounter such problems. Nor are “You” likely to be able to pull off many of her methods of providing a warm atmosphere: borrowing paintings from museums, ransacking hotels to upgrade furniture and snatch lobby plants for a rented room, or flying in famous chefs to cook a single meal.
Learning that “people in rooms with lower ceilings tend to think more concretely than those under higher ceilings, which seem to prime people to think more abstractly,” is of use only if You have a choice of buildings.
To her credit, the author does provide You with lists of basic work skills (such as pairing intensive planning with on-the-spot flexibility) and basic etiquette requirements (such as getting people’s names and titles right and not talking with a full mouth). For those willing to undertake a daunting networking schedule, she proposes circulating tables at what she calls “see-and-be-seen restaurants” from 7 a.m. breakfasts to dinner time.
Most of all, Ms. Marshall stresses expressing personal and cultural sensitivity toward those from whom You wish to gain concessions. And she goes to great lengths to do so. Once, to be sure a short Russian president did not need to worry about how he looked in photographs when sitting down—“a potential calamity”—Ms. Marshall elevated him by having blocks cut from a matching chair’s legs and nailed to his chair.
To help You avoid cultural offense, the author provides an appendix with specific national taboos, and advises choosing foods and presents that refer gracefully to the guest’s traditions. Her method is to hunt up “raw materials that are meaningful—broken ceramic pieces of an antique teacup or plate, single heirloom earrings missing a match,” and then to transform them into presents “in a reimagined, creative manner, perhaps as a mosaic or in a shadow box or keepsake display case.”
Does all this flattering attention really have an effect on those with their own professional agendas? Certainly. This writer, although a stranger to the author, is favorably cited more than once, and therefore feels churlish registering a complaint.
But here it is: The less glamorous and more challenging responsibilities of the protocol office—in dealing with the resident foreign diplomatic corps and our representatives abroad—are not within the purview of this book.
Foreign diplomats in Washington, who enjoy immunity from prosecution in the American justice system, have committed crimes ranging from flouting traffic laws to enslaving their imported household help. Local outrage is aroused, especially over their parking habits, but the principle of immunity is honored to ensure that American diplomats are not subject to foreign prosecution. A satisfactory solution to this has never been found; generally countries simply recall the offenders.
Even now, America is dealing with the equivalent problem in reverse: British outrage that the wife of an American diplomat, accused of causing a fatal traffic accident while driving on the wrong side of the road in Northamptonshire, has not been extradited to stand trial.
But the Office of Protocol was, at least once, also able to turn its responsibility into an astonishing opportunity. During the civil-rights movement of the 1960s, that office succeeded in desegregating public accommodations along the route from Washington to New York, which were often utilized by ambassadors from small countries, who did double duty as ambassadors to the United Nations. The protocol office used the argument that American prestige abroad was damaged when Americans treated African ambassadors the same way that they then legally treated African-Americans.
It seems that respecting longstanding cultural traditions does have a limit.
—Ms. Martin’s latest books are “Miss Manners’ Guide to Contagious Etiquette” and “Minding Miss Manners: In an Era of Fake Etiquette.”
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