{"id":5402,"date":"2005-09-30T10:38:25","date_gmt":"2005-09-30T14:38:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5402"},"modified":"2005-09-30T10:38:25","modified_gmt":"2005-09-30T14:38:25","slug":"the-diplomat-hat-doesnt-fit-well-on-karen-hughes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-diplomat-hat-doesnt-fit-well-on-karen-hughes\/","title":{"rendered":"The diplomat hat doesn’t fit well on Karen Hughes"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve never been entirely clear on why Karen Hughes was tapped to be the Bush the administration’s undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs. Granted, Hughes is not without talents — she was a capable local journalist, she’s not a bad writer, and she has an uncanny ability to keep the president focused — but there’s literally nothing in her background about diplomacy or international affairs. (Of course, matching unqualified loyalists with key government posts<\/a> is about the only thing the Bush gang does with any efficiency).<\/p>\n

With her limitations in mind, Hughes’ journey<\/a> to the Middle East this week would inevitably be fascinating. Would Bush’s trusted aide win over skeptics? As Fred Kaplan explained, not so much<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Could someone please explain to me what Karen Hughes is doing. Her maiden voyage to the Middle East has turned into a fiasco. She assures a room of Saudi women that they, too, will someday drive cars; they tell her they’re actually happy right now, thank you. She meets with a group of Turkish women — hand-picked by an outfit that supports women running for political office — who brusquely tell her she has no credibility as long as U.S. troops occupy Iraq.<\/p>\n

In a sense, this is par for the course when American officials meet with unofficial audiences abroad.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Maybe Hughes should have stuck to the Bubble Boy policy and met exclusively with pre-screened, loyalty-oath signing sycophants. It would have made for better pictures back home.<\/p>\n

But Kaplan’s broader point about the message behind Hughes’ trip is an important one.
\n<\/p>\n

Put the shoe on the other foot. Let’s say some Muslim leader wanted to improve Americans’ image of Islam. It’s doubtful that he would send as his emissary a woman in a black chador who had spent no time in the United States, possessed no knowledge of our history or movies or pop music, and spoke no English beyond a heavily accented “Good morning.” Yet this would be the clueless counterpart to Karen Hughes, with her lame attempts at bonding (“I’m a working mom”) and her tin-eared assurances that President Bush is a man of God (you can almost hear the Muslim women thinking, “Yes, we know, that’s why he’s relaunched the Crusades”).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This isn’t necessarily about mocking Hughes’ goals, only the style in which she hopes to achieve them. She talks down to her audience<\/a>, offers the kind of schlock<\/a> that no one in the Arab world wants, and lectures them<\/a> about the inadequacies of their culture.<\/p>\n

Is this really intended to improve the United States’ standing? Aren’t there any real<\/i> diplomats around who could be more effective?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve never been entirely clear on why Karen Hughes was tapped to be the Bush the administration’s undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs. Granted, Hughes is not without talents — she was a capable local journalist, she’s not a bad writer, and she has an uncanny ability to keep the president focused […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5402\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}