“There are too many drunks around town starting rumors,” he said, reacting to published reports there that he was leaving in July.
Blankenship, a Florida investment banker and former director of a Jacksonville veterinary clinic, has been critical of the local government, calling, for example, for investigating the bona fides of the Bahamian police. The government has accused him of meddling.
“There are those that will complain and say that I am meddling,” he told the Guardian earlier this year, “but this is a free country and we can speak our minds. I am thick-skinned and I have learned to ignore . . . idle chatter.”
Well, somebody wasn’t ignoring it. Blankenship quit on June 5 and should be arriving back in Florida today. Asked whether Blankenship had been yanked out of the job, a senior administration official said: “Let’s just say he came to the conclusion that his service to the nation had run its course.”
Another ambassador and GOP fundraiser, Earl N. Phillips Jr. of High Point, N.C., left last month after serving a little more than a year as ambassador to the Eastern Caribbean.
Come winter, these two postings might look pretty good.
By Al Kamen, Washington Post
