Robie Marcus (Mark) Hooker Palmer served as United States Ambassador to Hungary from 1986 to 1990 during its transition from communism to democracy. His posting as ambassador was just one part of a long career in diplomacy and advocacy for democratic values.

Palmer joined the United States Foreign Service in 1964. He became part of the State Department’s Policy Planning Council and worked in the Nixon Administration as executive speechwriter for then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. He worked in the ensuing Ford, Carter, Reagan, and H.W. Bush administrations, spending 26 years in the Foreign Service.

During the Reagan Administration, he was the primary author of President Reagan’s celebrated “ash heap of history” speech and was well-known as the State Department’s top “Kremlinologist,” serving as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. In 1983 he helped launch the National Endowment for Democracy and in 1985, organized the Geneva Summit between President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

After his government service, Palmer served as the President of the Central European Development Corporation and co-founded Central European Media Enterprises, which launched the first independent national television stations in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania, and Ukraine. He also served as Vice Chairman of the Board of Freedom House, Vice President of the Board for the Council for a Community of Democracies, and as a founding board member of the National Endowment for Democracy.

He graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude from Yale University in 1963. During the Civil Rights Movement, he was a member of Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.

Palmer served on Spirit of America’s Board of Advisors from 2004 until his death in 2021.