Nancy Brinker's Diplomatic Whirlwind: A Non-Stop Tour

WASHINGTON — "Lunch is just a concept sometimes," Nancy Brinker said with a shrug.

This was one of those times. A baggie of mixed nuts pulled from the top drawer of her desk and a can of Diet Coke Plus sipped through a plastic straw would sustain the United States chief of protocol through a day when planning for the visit of Pope Benedict XVI was squeezed in between an exhausting assortment of diplomatic ceremonies, confabs and crises.

"We have 15 visits (of foreign leaders) in the next 18 days," explained Brinker, 61, who lives in Palm Beach when not in Washington or traveling the world with President Bush. Shepherd One, the Pope's plane, will barely take off from Andrews Air Force Base on Friday before South Korean President Lee Myung-bak will arrive for a weekend at Camp David with the president. Next week, Bush hosts an economic summit in New Orleans with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Oh, and the office of protocol will still be responsible for the Pope and his entourage of 70 in New York City through Sunday after he finishes his three-day stay in the nation's capital. There are Popemobiles to deal with in both cities. And what about the Pope's 81st birthday occurring on his visit to the White House on Wednesday?

"This is one of the most difficult periods I'll have in office," conceded Brinker, who assumed the post in September after serving as U.S. Ambassador to Hungary since 2001.

The ambassador is perhaps better known as the founder of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a foundation dedicated to fighting breast cancer and named for Brinker's only sister, Susan, who died from the disease in 1980. A breast cancer survivor herself, Brinker also began the organization's major fundraising event, the Race for the Cure, which now draws more than a million participants in 112 five-kilometer runs across the nation.

As chief of protocol, Brinker is responsible for planning and hosting when foreign chiefs of state and heads of governments come to the United States, as well as for coordinating the logistics of these visits. She accompanies the president on official visits abroad and advises him on diplomatic procedures. She manages Blair House, which is located across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House and serves as a presidential guesthouse. She deals with the foreign diplomatic corps stationed in Washington. She even helps pick out the gifts that Bush gives foreign leaders.

"We have an office that does nothing but gifts," she said. "The president likes to give iconic American items" — listing a motorcycle jacket and an iPod as examples.

There are visas and other documents to secure for the visiting leader's aides and bodyguards. Researchers in the office of protocol stay busy just ensuring that American hosts address their guests properly.

On this morning, for instance, Brinker was scheduled to greet "His Excellency Dr. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister" of Germany.

Pope Benedict XVI, the "Holy Father," will be addressed as "Your Holiness" or "Most Holy Father," she explained. Upon meeting the Pope, Catholics often go down on one knee and kiss his ring. Others bow slightly and shake his hand.

Attire must be conservative. Heaven forbid that a woman show up to meet the Pope in a sleeveless dress.

Brinker is often the first person to greet a foreign head of state arriving on U.S. soil.

"All diplomacy is personal engagement," she said. So the chief of protocol comes prepared to chat about the visitor's family, homeland, education, goals, political situation and a wealth of other topics of conversation when welcoming the foreign leader.

"There are lot of moving parts to this," said the ambassador.

Indeed, this is a woman who carries three cell phones and a Blackberry in her purse.

Planning for the Pope

She began this day about 5:30 a.m. at her home in Georgetown. She exercises early. Elliptical trainer and weights. "I try to work out with a trainer on weekends," she said.

She tends to personal business before heading to her first floor office in the State Department before 8 a.m. — e-mailing family and friends and dealing with her cancer work and other foundations.

In her paneled office, behind dark wooden Venetian blinds, she is briefed on the activities of her 70-odd "direct report" employees. She wants to know who is doing what and when they're doing it and who needs help.

On this day, the meetings are followed shortly by a TV interview with Melissa Charbonneau of the Christian Broadcasting Network. Lights and camera are set up in Brinker's office. Wearing a beige suit, she moves from behind her big desk with a Neiman Marcus shopping bag beside it to a chair in the center of the carpeted room. Answering questions, she previews the papal visit. It will be "beautiful" and "historic" and "stately" and both the president and first lady are "very excited" about it, she reveals.

With the interview finished and TV equipment still being gathered, the ambassador is back behind her desk exchanging e-mails. Katy Ballenger Mitarai, her director of public affairs, comes in to report on something but hand-held electronic distractions interfere.

"We're both Blackberrying at the same time we're trying to carry on a conversation," said the aide, sharing a laugh with her boss.

The ambassador sits down for a quick interview with a newspaper reporter before rushing into a staff briefing on the papal visit. Bryan Langley, the assistant chief of protocol for visits, conducts the meeting as Brinker and other staffers sit around a table with two-inch thick booklets in front of them. These contain the Pope's minute-by-minute agenda and the behind-the-scene steps needed to keep him on schedule.

When the Pope celebrates Mass with 44,000 people at the new Nationals Park on Thursday, "you know something is going to go wrong," Brinker predicts outside the meeting. Her staff must be ready to handle whatever happens.

In the meeting, Langley shows off the gold-embossed programs that the office has prepared for Wednesday's papal visit to the White House.

There will be about 12,000 invited guests on the South Lawn — compared to about 7,000 when Britain's Queen Elizabeth came. "This will be like an Easter Egg Roll" in scope, Langley tells the staff.

The weather is the unknown factor, he admitted, showing diagrams of who will stand where during the arrival ceremony.

"No umbrellas are allowed on the grounds," he warned. "Security."

The meeting ends with Brinker excusing herself from a "working lunch" at an upstairs buffet to handle an emergency — which she declined to discuss. She retreats to her office.

Often "some nice sweet little fairy leaves chocolate on my desk" for such moments, she said.

Outreach for Ambassadors

One of the first things Brinker did upon taking office was to survey the 186 ambassadors stationed in Washington, D.C., and ask how the office of protocol could make their stay in the United States more meaningful. Among the results was a "Discover America" outreach program where the diplomats and their spouses are taken on educational and cultural tours outside of the nation's capital. The first such tour took place in January and was to Florida. The next will take the diplomats to California for five days near the end of June. They will visit the Reagan Library, Silicon Valley (with stops at Apple, Google, and other high-tech firms), Cal Tech and be in the audience of the Jay Leno Show.

The goal is to help them "understand America," she said.

As part of her outreach program, Brinker intends to invite all of the ambassadors to a private lunch or dinner at her house in Georgetown before her term ends when the Bush administration leaves office in January of 2009. She is about halfway through the list.

Another outreach session begins in mid-afternoon when members of the foreign diplomatic corps gather in a State Department auditorium for a briefing on Bush's recent trip to Russia and the NATO Summit. Brinker introduces White House Press Secretary Dana Perino and Dan Fried, the acting undersecretary of state for political affairs.

Such private post-trip briefings were requested in her survey of ambassadors, said Brinker.

The next stop is the ornate Benjamin Franklin Diplomatic Reception Room on the top floor of the State Department. Franklin is revered here as the "Father of the American Foreign Service" and the furnishings and art in his namesake suite are valued at more than $90 million.

Brinker is there to serve as mistress of ceremonies for the swearing in of Deborah K. Jones, a career foreign service officer, as the new U.S. Ambassador to Kuwait.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg administers the oath of office. Guests are still congratulating the new ambassador and sipping champagne shortly after 5 p.m. when the chief of protocol slips out and heads for an elevator.

"My day is about half through," she joked. "I've got three receptions and a dinner" to attend.