Thomas Tracy, the Californian businessman who would like to be the next US ambassador to Ireland, may have a formidable block to his ambition: the vice-president, Dick Cheney. Long before he reached his present eminence, Cheney served as a congressman for the state of Wyoming. The current US ambassador, the stetson-hatted Mike Sullivan, is a former governor of Wyoming. A well-placed source says Cheney might be disposed to letting Sullivan remain in place for some time.
Though Sullivan is a Democrat, he would be far more conservative than, say, a New York liberal Republican such as Peter King, and therefore ideologically compatible with the Bush Administration. In any case, the same source says, deciding on who the next ambassador to Dublin will be is a long, long way down President Bush's priorities.