Locke and McFaul -- Two birds of the same feather?

I suppose that it is not a complete coincidence that Gary Locke and Michael McFaul -- both Obama administration political appointees to two major powers quite often antagonistic to the U.S. -- should be leaving their posts at about the same time.

Both men are not "professional diplomats," but quite well-versed, in their own ways, about the country to which they were assigned to serve. They both aspired not to be "high and mighty" but "people of the people."

Don't call me Mr. Ambassador -- Call me Mike, Gary.

Also, both seem to be terribly bright, in an abstract way, and impatient with protocol and decorum.

McFaul will be especially remembered for his obsessive use of the social media to break down communications barriers -- and creating unnecessary complications in the process.

Doubtless, both envoys rubbed the foreign-policy bureaucracy in the two countries where they served -- still very much old-style "communist" -- in the wrong way.

Simply put, in their all-American style, they didn't show enough "respect" to the authorities, from the latter's perspective.

Or, to use that old-fashioned word, display sufficient "tact," which (at least in the past, and in certain situations and cultures) is perhaps more important, in carrying out effective diplomacy, than razor-sharp, in-your-face, intelligence.

But of course history will judge, if ever.