October 31, 2007
White House Watch: Another BFF Bites The Dust
Karen Hughes, the president's pick to be the face of America in the Arab world after 9/11, will be back home in Texas by year's end. Today's announcement that she is stepping down hasn't inspired very much fanfare, leading us to suspect only a dim awareness in Washington that Hughes was still on the job.
Hughes, of course, is among a cadre of longtime advisers and confidantes that President Bush brought to Washington after they helped him win the 2000 election. After a brief stint as White House counselor at the start of his presidency, Hughes was lured back in March 2005 to be the new undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs. Despite the job description's global scope, there was little question Hughes' main task would be damage control in the Middle East.
It was a puzzling though largely uncontroversial nomination. Hughes spoke not a lick of Arabic and had no background in Middle Eastern affairs, a handicap that became painfully obvious in her first public tour of the region. Hughes appeared to be caught flat-footed by the customs and beliefs of the people she was meeting with at practically every stop. Slate's Fred Kaplan implored her in a headline, "Stay Home!"
Robert Draper's deep-insider version of the Bush presidency provides yet more cringe-inducing detail. According to a review this week by Stephen Hayes, Hughes remarked upon exiting a meeting with an Egyptian sheik, "I think I was able to have a wonderful meeting with His Eminence to talk with him about the common language of the heart."
(Did the Weekly Standard get tipped off? Just wondering.)
As with the doomed Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers, Hughes' posting probably says more about the nominator than the nominee. Anyone in Hughes' position would have faced tremendous odds, not least because of the Bush administration's globally unpopular foreign policy style. The rise of Al-Jazeera and Arabic-language media was another unforeseen development that the U.S. could do little to head off.
All things considered, the administration's post-9/11 hearts and minds campaign appears to have been a spectacular failure. It's hard to know where the blame for that lies or what to do about it. Public diplomacy in the Middle East isn't topic A these days, as Washington focuses on rectifying missteps in Iraq and the nuisance regime next door in Iran. And it isn't as if the people at State haven't accomplished plenty over the past couple of years.
"We've significantly expanded outreach to women, with a new breast cancer initiative in the Middle East and Latin America, and businesswomen's mentoring initiatives," Hughes said in remarks from the State Department today. "A new partnership with U.S. higher education has helped attract a record number of international students to study in America and we've reversed the trend of decline that began in the years following September 11. We issued an all-time high 591,000 student visas in 2006 and traveled with university presidents across the world to send a welcoming message to international students."
It's not clear how much of a priority Hughes' office is these days in the White House, which hasn't yet discussed her departure or possible replacements at length. In an online chat on MediaForFreedom.com last week, Hughes gave no indication of her pending resignation. She was, however, asked what languages she speaks.
"Unfortunately, I only speak English and a little Spanish that I learned while living in Panama as a young girl," Hughes responded. "I love the Spanish language -- ¡Qué bonita! -- and one of my goals in the future is to take lessons to improve my speaking and understanding."
Posted at 6:06 PM
Posted to:
Bush Administration, Middle East, President Bush
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