There was plenty of scepticism when Rex Tillerson, the United Secretary of State who is honouring New Zealand with an early visit next week, was first nominated for the job.
He had never held public office - having been national president of the Boy Scouts of America doesn't count.
Being an oil baron was a strange credential for a diplomat when climate change diplomacy had triumphed with the Paris Accord.
But he wasn't just any oil baron. Tillerson worked so closely with Russia on a deal to explore the Arctic Ocean for oil, that President Vladimir Putin awarded him the Order of Friendship in 2013, although the deal was frozen when sanctions were applied to Russia for annexing Crimea.
The scepticism over the appointment moved to suspicion as apparently close ties between Russia and Donald Trump's advisers have become more evident.
But whatever Trump's motives behind the appointment, what has become evident even in the nascent days of the Trump Administration - it is only 133 days old - is that Tillerson is a relative voice of reason in the current tumult of Washington.
His confirmation hearings revealed a person who was not itching to do the job but as someone who had answered a call that one does not turn down. He appeared to have some integrity and avoided making a fool of himself or his boss.
He was never a Trump acolyte. He backed and funded one of Trump's moderate rivals, Jeb Bush, in the Republican primaries.
And as head of ExxonMobil, he recognised climate change and the company supported the Paris Accord. Tillerson and Trump's daughter Ivanka have been widely reported as among those who privately counselled him not to withdraw the US from the accord.
The mild success they had was in getting Trump to say he would try to renegotiate the deal so it was better for the United States but the tone Trump took in his announcement suggests there is no optimism that that will occur.
The biggest favour Tillerson could do for New Zealand in his visit next week is to join some of the dots and explain US foreign policy.
Perhaps he could explain how the "America First" doctrine of President Trump sits alongside his claim to be a global leader.
On climate change global leadership will be taken up by China, Britain and Europe.
On trade, that role has been taken by China and Japan.
United States' leadership is not wanted for the sake of it but only for what it delivers for mutual benefit.
The decision by the US to withdraw from the Paris Accord and the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement is not likely to feature large on the agenda of talks next week with Prime Minister Bill English and Foreign Minister Gerry Brownlee - who has previously met Tillerson when he was Energy Minister.
For a visit so rare, the Government is not going to waste time relitigating decisions by the US that were promised by Trump in the election campaign, no matter how idiotic they are.
In the past 20 years, there have been only four visits by a US Secretary of State: Madeline Albright in 1998, Condoleezza Rice in 2008, Hillary Clinton in 2010 to mark the normalisation in the Wellington Declaration, and John Kerry last year at the end of an Antarctic visit.
The normalisation of relations between New Zealand and US, after the anti-nuclear rift, was driven from within the State Department by former Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell then Danny Russel, political appointees under a Democratic Administration.
