Anna Wintour: Republicans cool to idea of Vogue editor as UK ambassador One Republican official added sarcastically: "Her policy repertoire of negotiating her seat at an Armani event and barking latte orders to her assistants obviously makes her uniquely qualified to handle America's diplomatic affairs with one of our most important allies." Other conservatives quietly expressed concerns about whether Ms Wintour - a British-born dual citizen with a British father and American mother - should be expected to devote her loyalty to the US. A spokesman for Ms Wintour declined to deny that she may receive the appointment. "She is very happy with her current job," said the spokesman. Some diplomatic officials and Democrats vigorously defended the prospect of appointing an outsider such as Ms Wintour, whose fearsome management of a large and successful global company earned her the nickname "Nuclear Wintour" and inspired the book and film "The Devil Wears Prada." P.J. Crowley, a former spokesman for Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, said such "FOPs" - "friends of the president" - could bring "a new perspective and a new skill set" to America's embassies and challenge the professional bureaucracy. "There's a culture inside the foreign service that tends towards caution," Mr Crowley told The Daily Telegraph. The political ambassadors are often people who have become successful not by being cautious, but by being aggressive. Philip Lader, one of Bill Clinton's ambassadors to Britain, agreed. "One of the most important qualifications is the confidence of the president," he said. And there are many professional backgrounds that would qualify for success as an ambassador. Others, however, said the notion of a celebrity appointment highlighted the lack of importance attributed to the role by Washington - in contrast to Whitehall's view of Britain's opposite number, which is seen as the pinnacle of a Foreign Office career. Ronald Neumann, an ambassador under George W Bush, said that far from reflecting negatively on the "special relationship," this was because relations at the top level of government were already "extraordinarily dense." "The role is probably less important in Britain than in some country where we don't have that kind of depth, and where policy can be much more affected by the work of the ambassador," said Mr Neumann. One US diplomatic source said: "It's a reflection of modern diplomacy that the role of the ambassador between the closest of allies has become that of a travel agent whose job it is to meet American dignitaries at Heathrow and throw a good cocktail party."