MARK GILBERT
The president’s man
United States ambassador Mark Gilbert is a lesson in diplomacy.
When trying to describe presidential candidate Donald Trump in three words this, after great thought, is what he manages: His. Own. Man.
There are rules as to what he can say directly about both presidential candidates but as someone who campaigned for US President Barack Obama and raised millions of dollars for the Democratic Party, you wonder what the ticker-tape inside his head would read.
True to his diplomatic convictions, his description of Hillary Clinton isn’t much less oblique: First. Woman. Nominee.
While many are bewildered by Trump’s ascendancy to what was previously thought an unthinkable political height, Gilbert, immaculately dressed in red, white and blue, says this election, like many of the elections and referendum around the world, is different from what we have seen in the past.
‘‘It’s not just the US that has had a different kind of election, you have seen this in other countries where you see candidates who have come from places where candidates don’t normally come from and you have seen huge emphasis on change.’’
Trump’s Republican presidential nomination in July was not as surprising as some might think, he says.
‘‘I have a background in finance and the markets. One thing I learned a long time ago was that you can be 100 per cent right on your research ... and the market will tell you something completely different.
‘‘So when I watched the first debate and I saw Donald Trump insult every person on that stage I thought ‘he’s done’. But when the polls came out a few days later his numbers had gone up and the others’ had gone down, that told me, wait a minute, I’m missing something here.
‘‘That’s when you first got the inkling that there was a wave coming of wanting to challenge the status quo.’’
Gilbert, a former major league baseball player, has served as ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa since February 2015.
His Lower Hutt residence is a sumptuous affair. Barack Obama greets you from an enormous pixelated portrait at the entrance.
He and Gilbert can be seen hanging out together in a few photographs dotted around a plush sitting room – a sweaty duo playing basketball here, in candid conversation there.
He’s framed up with former president Bill Clinton too. Jostling for space on the mantel is a moment captured between John Key and Gilbert. Uncle Sam is hanging in there too.
His future as ambassador will be in the hands of whoever wins the election at the change of power at noon on January 20, 2017.
For the time being, he serves at the pleasure of the current president.
He remembers the night he first met Obama, on July 7, 2005.
‘‘I was invited to a dinner to meet the junior senator from Illinois, one Barack Obama.
‘‘I was tired and had had a long day but I remembered the Gilbert family motto: ‘Never don’t go.’ So we went and we met this young junior senator and we were so impressed listening to him talk about, not only the United States, but about the rest of the world.
‘‘We walked out that night and said this man could be running for president in 8-12 years. Little did we know that a year and a half later he would be running for office.’’
In late 2006, Obama asked him to join his team. Gilbert, 60, would go on to help build infrastructure for the Democratic Party and raise tens of millions of dollars on its behalf.
Mark Gilbert was raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with his younger brother and sister till 1973 when they moved to the warmer climes of Florida, where he has remained ever since.
His father and grandfather were baseball players and Gilbert was a sporty kid from the get-go. He had a baseball glove in his hand before he could walk.
He was named High School All American in basketball and All State American in baseball.
With a scholarship to Florida State University he studied finance and played a lot of sport.
He was drafted by the Chicago Cubs in the minor baseball leagues after he graduated. After two years he was traded to the Cincinnati Reds, playing for them for five years before being signed to the Chicago White Sox in the major league – coincidentally, Obama’s favourite team.
‘‘I was good. I was very, very fast. Thirty-five years ago I could run.’’
But a knee injury ended his career, just seven games into his contract, so he turned to the other thing he knew: money.
He started out at Goldman Sachs and moved to Lehman Brothers, where he focused on private wealth businesses. He was there till the Barclays acquisition of that company before a stint at UBS ahead of his first posting as an ambassador.
He met his wife Nancy – whose presence can be felt in a painting of her and Gilbert by the crackling fireplace in their residence – while she was studying at Northwestern in Chicago. They have been together 37 years and have two grown daughters
They both grew up in Jewish families. Consciously, he doesn’t think about his faith but subconsciously, it’s who he is. ‘‘It’s how you’ve been raised, it’s how you have been taught how to treat people, how to talk to people, how to behave. Having that background has served me well.’’
He says he has come at a good time in the US/NZ relationship. He believes the Trans Pacific Partnership will be passed during Obama’s lame duck period.
‘‘The TPP will have the highest standards of any trade agreement that has ever been attempted ... It brings up human rights, workers’ rights, environmental concerns, [things] that normally don’t get discussed in trade deals.’’
His country will be sending a warship as part of the 75th anniversary of New Zealand’s Navy. It will be the first US warship to dock here since the ANZUS bustup over New Zealand’s anti-nuclear legislation in the mid-1980s.
John Key has said that he is 100 per cent confident it meets New Zealand’s law, which means it’s neither nuclear powered nor carries nuclear weapons. Gilbert maintains his country’s ‘neither confirm nor deny’ policy.
That’s Ambassador Gilbert for you: All. American. Diplomat.