The reason this sucks is that he made a commitment to lower the % of ambassadors that were political appointees. However, when members of the American Foreign Service Association (the group that represents US diplomats) looked at his first couple months in office, he was out pacing the standard 30% political appointee rate for ambassadorships. To keep it at that historic level he basically would have had to stop any future political appointments, and I believe he still gave out more. That's why this is sort of a big deal. Yes, it's business as usual (or worse), but he said he would change the situation and didn't.