Ambassador Rufus Gifford is the reality star who will try to fix America’s image abroad
By Roxanne Roberts,
Irfan Cemiloglu/Anadolu Agency Getty Images
Charles Rivkin was an assistant secretary of state for President Barack Obama when he flew to Denmark and discovered his luggage was lost. He walked over to baggage claim desk where a young woman took his name and asked where he was staying so she could return the bag. “Actually, I’m staying with the American ambassador,” he told her.
Her jaw dropped and she said, “You know Rufus Gifford?” Of course, he said.
“You know his husband, too?” she continued. Yes, he nodded.
“And what about his dog, Argos?” Yes, he assured her, but not as well as he knows Rufus or Stephen.
Most ambassadors are not household names in their host country, but most ambassadors don’t star in a popular reality show, have Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary at their wedding or get stopped for selfies on the street. Rufus Gifford did this and more, earning him a special place in hearts of Danes and in the history of American diplomacy.
Gifford, 46, is part of a new generation of ambassadors: Young, accessible, telegenic, equally at ease talking foreign policy on news shows and posting dog photos on social media. While not the first openly gay man to hold the title, he was the first person to win an award for his Danish reality series (“I Am the Ambassador”) and the first to see himself go global when it streamed on Netflix.
“My ambassadorship was absolutely defined by taking risks,” Gifford says. “I was always frustrated by the people who would say to me, ‘Oh, you just got the sweetest gig in the world. You get to just go around, play golf, live in your great house and visit with the queen.’” His response? “First of all, I don’t play golf. I want to work, I want to work my tail off. And sure, I’d love to meet the queen, but it’s certainly not why I want to be an ambassador.”
Now President Biden has nominated Gifford to be his chief of protocol, the State Department envoy who travels with the president on all overseas trips, greets every foreign leader who visits the United States and serves as the liaison to all the foreign diplomats serving here. With America’s image abroad badly in need of repair, longtime friends say Gifford personifies a return to civility and cooperation.
“I think Rufus sees himself as the first embrace,” says Democratic political consultant Stephanie Cutter. “He’s the first impression that world leaders will get from this administration. And it’s a pretty good first impression.”
Rufus Gifford
Gifford and his dog Argos.
Gifford’s path to global diplomacy
was full of unexpected turns. He grew up with three siblings in wealthy Manchester by the Sea, Mass., a suburb north of Boston. He went to boarding school and then Brown University. His mother and his father, a retired banker who once served as Bank of America’s chairman, have been married for more than 50 years.
When he was 18, he came out. His parents, Gifford says, defined happiness one way: marriage, kids, a house in the suburbs. So after he graduated from college, he moved to Los Angeles to find his own path. “The process of coming out when you come from a traditional family, even if it’s not a religious family, is something that you need to navigate for yourself,” he says.
He considers his 20s “a series of failures.” He worked as a producer on a few movies in Hollywood, which sounds glamorous but wasn’t. Then he applied to business school and didn’t get in. He was desperate for a change when, a few months before his 30th birthday, John F. Kerry became the Democratic nominee for president.
Gifford called Kerry’s daughter, a classmate from Brown, and asked whether he could volunteer for the campaign. They put him to work fundraising in California, and everything clicked. “It’s the moment I balanced my head and my heart. That’s how I describe it. It’s this moment where, oh my God, not only am I passionate about the work that I’m doing but I actually feel like I’m good at it, too.”
Turns out Gifford was very good at it. Kerry’s loss led Gifford to a California-based political consulting firm, where he made a name for himself. In 2007, he was considering a job offer with Hillary Clinton but met Barack Obama and took a chance on the underdog during the 2008 campaign. Cutter says that Gifford “is incredibly personable and able to connect with people in an unique way that you don’t see very often.”
Gifford’s skill at managing wealthy donors led him to Washington as a top finance official for the Democratic National Committee and then Obama’s 2012 campaign. The move also led him to Stephen DeVincent, a veterinarian on a science fellowship at the State Department. DeVincent, a.k.a. “polar bear guy,” was working with Arctic nations to help negotiate polar bear treaties and “making sure that his love of animals translated into policy,” Gifford says.
The two quickly became a couple. “I look at the stars. He grounds us,” Gifford says. “He is in every way the yin to my yang.”
Joans Olufson/Polfoto
AP
Gifford, right, and his husband, Stephen DeVincent, visit Amalienborg Palace in Copenhagen for their farewell audience with Queen Margrethe of Denmark in January 2017.
Most ambassadors are either career foreign service officers or political appointees who give millions to the winning candidate. Gifford was one of a handful of Obama’s campaign staffers offered a posting and made an immediate splash.
“He really made an effort to convince the Danes that, as that we as a small nation, were able to punch above our weight,” says Peter Christensen, a Danish journalist. Gifford was well versed on policy issues but charmed Denmark with his light touch. “That’s something that Danes like: People who like to laugh at themselves.”
It wasn’t long before Erik Struve Hansen, an executive producer for Danish Broadcasting Corporation, approached Gifford with an idea: Would he consider doing a documentary series for young adults? The network had prior successes following a Danish pop star and other celebrities; what about an ambassador?
“It’s an important job and it’s taken very seriously by Danish society and by Danish politicians,” Struve Hansen says. “But for a younger audience I thought it was quite unknown exactly what that job was about.”
Gifford, he says, seemed quite different from what he normally thought of diplomats: Only 39 years old, Gifford was more outgoing and more down to earth than most ambassadors in Europe. He was proudly, openly gay. The idea of discovering Denmark through Gifford’s eyes was a compelling narrative. “And, of course, I also think he’s good looking, which is not a disadvantage for a TV show.”
Ambassadors are encouraged to do local media, and Gifford found the idea of reaching younger Danes intriguing. There is an entire generation of Europeans who loved Americans and American culture but were skeptical about American foreign policy.
Diplomacy, he says, is “handshakes and eye contact and trust. And so the idea behind the show was, can we, through sharing my life in my work, build trust.” The diplomatic relationship between the United States and Denmark, which goes back to the early 1800s, was already strong. But he wondered, “Can we modernize it? Can we make people interested in the work that we’re doing and make them actually trust us a bit?”
They expected a tiny audience, but the two-season, 10-episode series made Gifford into a national celebrity. It blended the professional – meetings, conferences, official duties – with the personal. Danes watched the new ambassador learning to speak Danish, exploring the country, and hosting parties at the American residence with political figures and a lot of Danish celebrities, which made for good television.
“I think we counted more than 28,000 people who had at some point been through the residence,” Christensen says. “That really says a lot about Rufus Gifford.”
There were also intimate moments. Down time with DeVincent and their golden retriever. Visits with his family. Frank discussions about his sexuality. The series ended with the couple’s wedding in 2015, a glamorous (privately funded) party complete with paparazzi and fireworks.
It was the same year the Supreme Court legalized marriage equality in the United States. Denmark had been the first country in the world to legally recognize civil partnerships for same-sex couples, in 1989; Gifford and DeVincent wanted to honor that history by holding their wedding in Copenhagen City Hall.
“It became part of a story that we wanted to tell,” he says. “A little country like Denmark could actually impact the world.”
Rasmus Flindt Pedersen/Polfoto
AP
Gifford and DeVincent after they married at Copenhagen City Hall in 2015.
The day Donald Trump was inaugurated, the two moved to Massachusetts, where they’ve been living with dogs Argos and Svend. Gifford decided to take another risk: run for an open congressional seat in 2018, hoping to bring some of the things he learned in Europe to American politics. It was his first time as a candidate in a crowded primary, and he ended up falling short.
“I’m not really afraid of failure: It hits me hard, but I’m not afraid of it,” he says. “I do think you have to go in with a sense of fearlessness, but it was a tough experience.”
He began fundraising for Biden not long after, and on Friday, the president officially tapped him to serve as chief of protocol.
In that job, he will choreograph all the details of any presidential visit, including who shakes hands and in what order, who sits where, who rides in the motorcade and a thousand other pieces of an international puzzle. Every country has its own cultural history that requires a delicate touch. The job is the epitome of “soft” diplomacy: Not the talking points of foreign policy, but what comes before and after.
Erin Clark/Boston Globe
Getty Images
Gifford speaks to campaign volunteers in Lowell, Mass., during his run for Congress.
Gifford will also need to repair damage done inside the Office of Chief of Protocol: A department watchdog reported that Sean Lawler, one of Trump’s appointees for the job, routinely made intimidating, abusive, homophobic and other inappropriate comments to subordinates, allegations that Lawler denied.
Traditionally, nominees do not comment on the job prior to confirmation and Gifford is no exception. But, according to his many admirers, he’s the right man at the right time.
“He’s had a set of diverse experiences, and the thing that links them together is that it’s always been about building relationships,” Cutter says. “And at this time, when we are repairing relationships all over the globe and reestablishing the United States as a force for good, Rufus is a perfect pick.”
Well, maybe not perfect. Soren Pind, Denmark’s justice minister when Gifford was in Copenhagen, calls him “the quintessential American: Optimistic and can do.” He adds, “There is no doubt in my mind, that Mr. Gifford made a real difference in the defense of the West.”
There’s one disappointment, says Pind: “I am only sad that he couldn’t help me secure a statue of Ronald Reagan in the Danish capitol. But even the best men have limits.”
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