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The New York Times
OPINION
Selling America
EDITORIAL,
nytimes.com on the Web, 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.
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