Secretary of State says life was 'easier' as ExxonMobil CEO

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson hassaid life as a CEO was “easier” than working for the Trump administration.

Mr Tillerson spoke candidly to reporters on the plane returning from his latest diplomatic tour, which included visits to Ukraine, Turkey, Germany, Qatar, and France, the Los Angeles Times reported.

“Well it is a lot different than being CEO of Exxon because I was the ultimate decision-maker...that makes life easier,” said Mr Tillerson.

He had spent four decades with the oil company and had grown accustomed to his staff and the organisation he helped shape.

Mr Tillerson said that as an executive he was used to making unilateral decisions.

"You own it, you make the decision, and I had a very different organisation around me. One that I spent my whole life with, people knew me very well and they knew what to expect,” he explained, adding that he was exhausted from the recent tightly-scheduled tour.

He described the Exxon Mobil decision-making process as “highly structured” which he felt allowed the company to “accomplish a lot in a very efficient way."

That is simply not the case in the bureaucracy of the State Department or with his somewhat contentious relationship with White House, who have reportedly complained about the several vacant deputy positions in the agency.

However, it has been reported that the White House has cut Mr Tillerson out of being overruled by Donald Trump on certain appointments, the LA Times reported.

It may not be of help that the White House wants to cut the agency’s funding by nearly 30 percent in the next fiscal budget.

Stewart Patrick, who served on the policy planning staff at the State Department in the George W. Bush administration, said his “suspicion is that within the White House, particularly amongst the nationalist faction … that this seems to actually be a concerted effort to diminish the role of the State Department in U.S. foreign policy and hamper its abilities to pursue policies that would be considered overly globalist,” The Hill newspaper reported.

Six months into Trump administration, the US also only has six Senate-confirmed Ambassadors around the world: the United Nations, Israel, Senegal/Guinea-Bissau, Congo-Brazzaville, China, and New Zealand/Samoa.

It is unclear whether the unprecedented lag in nominations and confirmations is due to Mr Trump, Mr Tillerson, or some combination of problems in finding suitable candidates to represent the US - and State Department - abroad.

Mr Tillerson made it clear in the on-board conversation that he was not criticising the government or the administration, but that the State Department was "largely not a highly disciplined organisation."

“Sometimes people don't want to take decisions. Coordination is difficult through the interagency [process],” he noted.

However, in past administrations, many decisions were made by political appointees - chosen and placed in order to keep an administration’s message and policies cohesive throughout the federal government.

Mr Tillerson’s staff is largely missing political appointees and career civil servants who are still working there from previous administrations are not normally asked to - and should not according to their job descriptions - make what may be politically-driven decisions on foreign policy.

Mr Trump, having only been in politics for two years, is also not familiar with the workings of the diplomatic world.

However, Mr Tillerson pointed out that in his “old life, I spent a lot of time around the political world because I had to deal with governments all over the world.... I'm quite comfortable in these settings."

Despite the adjustment period to working in government rather than with governments, Mr Tillerson said he felt "engagement with the rest of the world is actually very easy for me”.