The Karen Hughes Era

With Karen Hughes stepping down, some questions get asked about why she's so ineffective:

Q So in your mind, she has succeeded in her goal of outreach to the Arab world, based on those numbers that I just cited?

MS. PERINO: Look, I'm not going to comment or respond to a poll that you just read out. I don't know about those numbers, I don't know the questions that were asked; I think it's inappropriate. What I can tell you is that she has done amazing work. Let me give another example. She started a women's outreach effort with the Middle Eastern countries and started a breast cancer initiative. And just last week Mrs. Bush went and highlighted that initiative and went to four different countries in the Middle East, had a very successful trip in explaining that women have tools at their disposal when they find out that they have breast cancer, early detection and treatment. That is precisely what the President was hoping Karen Hughes would achieve, and she has.

Q So in your view, the U.S. image in the Arab world has improved under Karen Hughes?

MS. PERINO: We are making progress. I know that we have a long way to go.

And indeed we do have a long way to go.

Comments

OK, so she needed a job. Wasn't there some job somewhere in the private sector where she could have gotten a decent paycheck. Sure she had no apparent talent other than being a Bush fluffer but still, doesn't Bush have any chips to cash in?

Posted by rapier | November 1, 2007 12:48 PM

Seems breast cancer awareness is the most prominent issue Hughes can be cited for as having made improvements? Too bad a group of U.S. physicians weren't dispatched to work with Middle East physicians on the issue, as opposed to a former TV news anchor yakking with 2nd tier diplomatic functionaries.

Posted by steve duncan | November 1, 2007 1:01 PM

She's ineffective because no one has any idea how to do public diplomacy or what our goals are, and that includes Clinton. She is better than Charlotte Beers, but that's barely saying anything.

Posted by Sam | November 1, 2007 1:01 PM

Take it from someone who worked under her aegis: what Hughes sought to do at the State Department was "rapid response" in just the same manner as during the Bush campaign. That gets you through a 24-hour news cycle, but does nothing to advance the long-term view that foreigners have of the US. But more important, she made the same, useless assumption as did as her predecessors in that job -- namely, that Muslims don't like the US. So we responded with public relations, like "Hi", the Arabic-language magazine, documentaries on Muslim life in America, that sort of thing. But it's not the US that Muslims (and particularly Arabs) hate; it's our policies. But the Bush Administration (and far too many of the US public) just don't get that.

Posted by Traven | November 1, 2007 1:04 PM

Seems like anyone would have been hard-pressed to succeed at that job given U.S. policies in the Mid-East and the administration's reflexive discounting of the value of diplomacy. It's like putting a bandaid on a severed stump--the quality of the bandaid isn't going to matter much.

Posted by yave begnet | November 1, 2007 1:08 PM

Have to echo yave begnet. I defy anyone to do much better than she has done without the power to influence actual policy. Presentation can only take you so far, in the Middle East the substance of US actions is the biggest driver of US unpopularity.

Posted by Meh | November 1, 2007 1:20 PM

Our problem with Arab public opinion is that they think that we do not give damn about them. This opinion originates in the fact that we do not give damn about them.

Initiatives like informing Arab women about benefits of breast examination are confirming their level of expectation. The following anegdote is a bit relevant. A Bolivian told me that there was a coup d'etat when he was a student and the junta had posters posted at universities, which informed the students that Communism is evil because under Communism there is no freedom. For example...

the guys just suspended civil rights and made some mass arrests, so the example had to be selected with care

... for example, in Cuba students are not allowed to smoke in classrooms.

So you can always find examples for whatever you want to say, but the longer you have to look, the less convincing they are. Surely we care about the welfare of Arabs, for example...

Posted by piotr | November 1, 2007 1:22 PM

It probably was an impossible task. But if you want to improve your image in the Middle East, wouldn't you want to hire someone who, uhm, knows something about the Middle East?

Posted by jbd | November 1, 2007 1:23 PM

What good does a breast-cancer screening test do when the very people who could benefit are willing to blow themselves up anyways?

No offense Perino - but breast-cancer screening programs are exactly the kind of programs are a diversions which distract an organization from tackling its serious image problems. It is similar to Wal-Mart funding food drives and donating to charity. It does nothing to counter the arguments your detractors are making against you, and smells like a P.R. move.

Posted by Brad | November 1, 2007 1:24 PM

Considering her stunning lack of savvy and her overwhelming condesencion toward anyone who isn't like her or doesn't share her beliefs, Karen Hughes is like a bandaid laced with arsenic. So the quality does matter, some.

Posted by Woody Bombay | November 1, 2007 1:26 PM

Funny, because one could gather from Marc Lynch, and, from, well, the Arab press directly, that Karen Hughes was another cronyistic incompetent blowhard. Or just sent to insult them.

Posted by Luke | November 1, 2007 2:02 PM

It is a testimony to the Bush mindset that he thought that the best qualified person to engage in middle eastern public diplomacy was a person whose entire career was dedicated to telling Bush how great he was and making him look good to the public.

I mean, I'm sure the president valued Hughes for her ability to coach him using the most simple language possible, but why this qualified her to promote the USA throughout the middle east didn't make any sense to me. Unless you assume the president is stupid-- not an unfair or unlikely possibility.

Posted by Tyro | November 1, 2007 2:15 PM

Even if Karen Hughes knew what she was doing, how does she get Arabs to like the fact that the United States invaded and is still occupying an Arab country and is trying to push around a bunch of other ones. Until George Bush repents of all the mistakes he has made in international affairs, the position might as well remain vacant.

Posted by freelunch | November 1, 2007 2:30 PM

With Karen Hughes stepping down, some questions get asked about why she's so ineffective:

I can't say I'm surprised by it. Putting lipstick on a pig is pretty ineffective in general. When the lipstick is being applied by another pig, it's just a sad joke.

But I see other people are getting clever with bandage analogies. Phooey, pwned.

Posted by Cyrus | November 1, 2007 3:33 PM

She was ineffective because she is, quite frankly, and I'm being charitable here, a fucking idiot. A government official who goes to foreign countries and claims that "In God We Trust" is in our Constitution? What a maroon!

Posted by calipygian | November 1, 2007 4:27 PM

This comment thread is helping me through my sugar crash. Please keep it up, there can never be enough discussion of Karen Hughes.

Posted by Brittain33 | November 1, 2007 4:28 PM

With her departure, may we kindly see the retirement of the canard that "they only hate us because they don't understand us." Myopic arrogance is a lethal combo.

Posted by Matthew | November 1, 2007 6:18 PM

The problem with Arab public opinion is that they have no rational opinion and can't think for themselves. Why don't we use our opinion on people who actually aren't born hating Americans, like kurds, turks, and iranians? And maybe avert several wars in the process?
ARABS WILL NEVER LIKE US. look how they treat us in iraq. Hell, if they fought half as hard against saddam, there would be no need for us to save their sand-filled asses.

Posted by Homie Please | November 1, 2007 6:30 PM

Bush put this person in charge for the same reason he puts everybody else in charge of things that don't make his cronies any money: he does not care.

He speaks badly because he doesn't care what he's saying to you because he doesn't care about YOU.

And that's how he selects people to do things in his administration. If it isn't an important issue in terms of making him, Cheney or their cronies money or power - or screwing somebody else they don't like - then he doesn't care what happens. It's just another pointless task for him which he expends no effort on.

Outreach to Arabs? Bush?

Please...

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | November 2, 2007 12:35 AM

When I read "Homie Please"'s comments, I begin to understand why we are so hated overseas.

Posted by Matthew | November 2, 2007 9:56 AM

Don't know why she left and don't know that it matters. Seems her biggest coup was hiring Disney to shoot a tourism video. (I know of this only because they screwed that up, too -- showing the CANADIAN side of Niagara Falls, as seen from CANADA.) Now if only it wasn't so hard to get a damn visa.

But reading about the Foreign Service revolt over involuntary assignments to Baghdad yesterday, I was struck by this passage:

"Thomas told the diplomats that in the future, 'everyone in the Foreign Service is going to have to do one out of three tours in a hardship post.' Those who have not served in hardship assignments in the past will not be punished, but they all have to realize that there are 'different conditions' now than in the past, he said. "

So it sounds to me like State does not really expect Ms. Hughes' "public diplomacy" efforts to pay off anytime soon.

Posted by greg | November 2, 2007 12:10 PM