It is probably time to update my vacancy counter data for Under Secretary of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. I originally posted a table in 2014 when Richard Stengel was appointed. I updated it in 2019. Then, I honestly forgot about it up until a week ago.
While going through some old reports, I realized there were far too many names that I did not recognize. I did not know Trump administration had – wait for it – eight under secretaries (five of them acting) in four years. So, one one hand, it was time to update the data. On the other hand, technically, we only had acting under secretaries since I last updated the data in 2019.
Here we go with the table (EndDate / StartDate might be off by a day).
A couple of points:
- Richard Stengel still has the longest tenure.
- In the 8011 days I cover in the table, the under secretary position was vacant for 1851 days (or you know, five years). Acting officers were in office for 1553 days.
- There has been a total of 18 under secretaries.
Here is a summary table:
And timeline visual:
Reaching the Public 