Louis Susman

Last Thursday, I opened the paper to read that President Barack Obama had named “Chicago businessman Louis B. Susman” as the new U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Suddenly, I was hit by a wave of nostalgia.

There was Lou, resplendent in his whites, volleying tennis balls with Ted Kennedy. There was Tom Eagleton poking fun at “The Susser,” as he called him. There was Lou, behind a big cigar, in Whitey Herzog’s office at Busch Stadium, making sure that there was no daylight between him and his meal ticket, Cardinals’ team president August A. Busch Jr.

There was Lou, who was then the power behind Cardinals’ throne, calling a press conference to try to explain why he’d let relief pitcher Bruce Sutter escape to the Atlanta Braves. There was Lou, pretending that Bob Horner could replace Jack Clark and that Mike Heath for Joaquin Andujar was a nifty trade.

There was Harry Ornest, who then owned the St. Louis Blues, complaining that Lou had tried to bill him for sending two junior lawyers from his law firm to The Arena to “soak up the atmosphere.” There was former baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn, explaining in his memoirs that Lou had engineered his firing at Gussie Busch’s behest.

And there was Lou at Gussie’s funeral in 1989, looking solemn, but knowing that his ship had just come in. As an executor and trustee of Gussie’s estimated $1.5 billion estate, Lou got 1 percent of the value of estate’s personal property and 2 percent of the gross income of the money left in trust. Probate lawyers around town were stunned at his estate planning.

It was about this time that Lou Susman left his St. Louis law practice to become an investment banker in Chicago. He became a Democratic campaign finance vacuum cleaner, hitting up dozens of contacts for the maximum federal campaign donations and rolling them into big bundles.

He was serving as national finance director for Sen. John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign when his practiced eye fell on Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama. According to The Times of London, Lou raised at least $500,000 for the Obama campaign and nomination.

For this he was rewarded with the State Department’s juiciest plum: Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the United Kingdom, what used to be called the Court of St. James. It’s good duty: royalty, fancy parties and no heavy diplomatic lifting.

In the old days, the job went to the likes of John Adams, John Quincy Adams, James Monroe, Martin Van Buren and James Buchanan, all of whom became president; by James Russell Lowell, the Romantic poet; by statesmen like John Hay, who was Lincoln’s personal secretary and Theodore Roosevelt’s secretary of state, and diplomat extraordinaire David K.E. Bruce; by bluebloods like Averill Harriman and Jock Whitney. To his regret, Franklin Roosevelt gave the job to Joseph P. Kennedy, who thought we could get along with the Nazis.

Lately it’s gone to businessmen and fundraisers. Charles Price, the Kansas City banker and candy tycoon, had the job during the Reagan years. George W. Bush gave the job to big fundraisers from Texas and California.

And now Lou Susman’s got the gig. I wonder if Queen Elizabeth needs help with her estate.