Even if that were so, why would anybody assume that she is the one to do the face-to-face spinning? Wouldn’t it be better to find someone who—oh, I don’t know—speaks the language, knows the culture, lived there for a while, was maybe born there?
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”).
. . .
Perhaps the most effective personification of public diplomacy in recent times was Vladimir Posner, a Soviet newsman who in the early 1980s appeared frequently on Ted Koppel’s Nightline to defend the invasion of Afghanistan. Posner was sophisticated, dapper, and spoke perfect, idiomatic, accent-free English. It turned out that he had been born and raised in the United States. His father was a Communist who immigrated to Moscow—taking along his family, including his teenage son—after being blacklisted during the McCarthy era. In short, Posner was the perfect man for the job.
So, that’s another thing Karen Hughes should be doing—looking for the Muslim equivalent of our own Vladimir Posner.
