The slang term cookie pusher has been applied to diplomats in general and members of the United States Foreign Service specifically.
The articles were very laudatory towards the US Foreign Service, talking about the conditions encountered at the time, versus stereotypes of diplomats being "striped pants Cookie Pushers from Harvard.
"[2] Ivor Evans in Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable uses the term denoting a junior diplomat who functions as a roving waiter at an official reception, presumably "pushing" appetizers on people who do not really want them.
My mission today is to make a plausible case that the newest gladiators in the international crime arena are the diplomats...[6]...Now, I realize that when most people in this country and around the world think of the State Department, they probably think of Secretary Powell, not the men and women standing behind him and beside him with wires coming out of their ears.
Or they think of polite cookie-pushers in pinstripes, not the fraud investigators who kick down doors to arrest career criminals or the trainers who are teaching Colombians how to foil the epidemic of kidnappings in that country.
... And you can see clear illustration of this in our top foreign policy priorities of the day: the war on terrorism in general and Afghanistan and Iraq in particular.
You tell that to Ambassador Khalilzad in Kabul, who spent all of last week and all of last Saturday criss-crossing the country, personal risk to himself, in order to encourage the Afghan people to vote.
Those ambassadors and the members of their teams are doing a great job for the American people, day-in, day-out, under increasingly difficult circumstances and at risk to themselves and to their family.