Karen Hughes is travelling the world trying to restore our soft power, but she should attend better to matters at home. When vice president Cheney fights Senator McCain over whether we should prohibit torture, he undoes whatever good her international efforts have done. Fortunately, it looks like the McCain amendment to the defense appropriation bill will pass and escape a presidential veto. But there is still a long way to go to undo the damage.
Hughes has to realize that public diplomacy is like advertising. Even the best ads cannot sell a poor product for long. We have started new broadcast stations like Radio Sawa and Al Hurra television for the Arab world, but they are mistrusted as American propaganda. Public diplomacy must be accompanied by better policies on detainees at home, and foreign policies such as a political settlement in Iraq, progress on the Arab-Israeli peace process, and modernizing Arab economies. Hughes will have to influence those policies if she wants to sell them.
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