J-10
11-05-2007, 10:36 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/opinion/04sun3.html?ref=opinion
Selling America
Published: November 4, 2007
Karen Hughes brought strengths to the job of public diplomacy, a critical, often overlooked tool for advancing the national interest. She was an insider’s insider, a confidante from President Bush’s Texas inner circle who could speak for him authoritatively. Yet as she prepares to leave office, polls shows the United States is hated more than ever in the Muslim world.
President Bush originally picked Charlotte Beers, a former advertising executive who once marketed Uncle Ben’s rice, as under secretary of state for public diplomacy. But Madison Avenue slickness did not play well when promoting Mr. Bush’s go-it-alone foreign policy after 9/11, and in less than two years, she was out.
Next up was Margaret Tutwiler, formerly Secretary of State James Baker’s spokeswoman and ambassador to Morocco, who had a deft political touch. She soon moved on to a big executive job on Wall Street.
Ms. Hughes’s weaknesses quickly became apparent when she took over. She had never been to the Middle East and had no expertise in the Muslim community that was a main target of the administration’s public diplomacy efforts. Her early forays to the region were embarrassing. “I am a mom, I love kids” is one phrase reflecting the folksy approach derided by the Arab media.
Eventually, Ms. Hughes, like Ms. Tutwiler, realized the limits of her ability to win America friends when the administration’s policies — waging preventive war in Iraq, redefining torture, repudiating the Geneva Conventions, establishing illegal detention camps, refusing to grapple with the Israeli-Palestinian crisis — were creating new enemies every minute and even souring allies.
She lowered her public profile, enlisted star athletes — Michelle Kwan and Cal Ripken Jr. — as envoys to the world, and turned her attention to winning bigger budgets, creating regional hubs to respond to the Arab media, and cultural exchanges like summer camps for Arab children to learn English.
Some of those initiatives may have a beneficial effect. But it should be clear to anyone who is paying attention that the issue is not who has the job of public diplomat. The best hope of defusing anti-Americanism and restoring our country’s international standing lies in a renewed commitment to the values that make it great, including respect for civil liberties and international law. That will require a change of attitude, as well as personnel, much higher up — in the Oval Office.
Selling America
Published: November 4, 2007
Karen Hughes brought strengths to the job of public diplomacy, a critical, often overlooked tool for advancing the national interest. She was an insider’s insider, a confidante from President Bush’s Texas inner circle who could speak for him authoritatively. Yet as she prepares to leave office, polls shows the United States is hated more than ever in the Muslim world.
President Bush originally picked Charlotte Beers, a former advertising executive who once marketed Uncle Ben’s rice, as under secretary of state for public diplomacy. But Madison Avenue slickness did not play well when promoting Mr. Bush’s go-it-alone foreign policy after 9/11, and in less than two years, she was out.
Next up was Margaret Tutwiler, formerly Secretary of State James Baker’s spokeswoman and ambassador to Morocco, who had a deft political touch. She soon moved on to a big executive job on Wall Street.
Ms. Hughes’s weaknesses quickly became apparent when she took over. She had never been to the Middle East and had no expertise in the Muslim community that was a main target of the administration’s public diplomacy efforts. Her early forays to the region were embarrassing. “I am a mom, I love kids” is one phrase reflecting the folksy approach derided by the Arab media.
Eventually, Ms. Hughes, like Ms. Tutwiler, realized the limits of her ability to win America friends when the administration’s policies — waging preventive war in Iraq, redefining torture, repudiating the Geneva Conventions, establishing illegal detention camps, refusing to grapple with the Israeli-Palestinian crisis — were creating new enemies every minute and even souring allies.
She lowered her public profile, enlisted star athletes — Michelle Kwan and Cal Ripken Jr. — as envoys to the world, and turned her attention to winning bigger budgets, creating regional hubs to respond to the Arab media, and cultural exchanges like summer camps for Arab children to learn English.
Some of those initiatives may have a beneficial effect. But it should be clear to anyone who is paying attention that the issue is not who has the job of public diplomat. The best hope of defusing anti-Americanism and restoring our country’s international standing lies in a renewed commitment to the values that make it great, including respect for civil liberties and international law. That will require a change of attitude, as well as personnel, much higher up — in the Oval Office.