NEW YORK: It must be the toughest job in PR trying to make a sceptical and frequently hostile world learn to love its only superpower.
Step forward Karen Hughes. She is one of President George W. Bush’s closest confidantes and the woman now charged with precisely that task: convincing the world, especially Muslims, that the United States has their best interests at heart.
Hughes will this week be officially nominated to the post of Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. Behind the complex title lies the challenge of selling America’s image abroad. It is a battle of hearts and minds aimed mostly at the Muslim world. That will mean boosting efforts to repair the massive damage done by the bloody aftermath of the toppling of Saddam Hussein and continued worries over America’s aggressive diplomatic spats with Syria, Iran and North Korea.
Hughes will serve under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who has already made high profile tour of international capitals. Hughes, a former television reporter is a highly skilled PR operative who has been at the heart of Bush’s rises to power.
Some experts believe the appointment of Hughes reveals a recognition of how bad America’s image problems abroad have become.
Several reports from government and independent think tanks have described America’s international image as in crisis. “Hostility toward America has reached shocking levels,” one study concluded late in 2003.
Few would underestimate Hughes’s ability in the dark arts of political spin doctoring. Bush appointed her coordinator of wartime public relations 24 hours after the 9/11 attacks
Hughes created a minor political surprise in August 2002, when she announced that she was leaving Washington to return to Texas. However, she remained close to Bush and returned to active political life last year to help the president win re-election.
Hughes was born in Paris into a military family and went to high school in Texas. Her television career initially focused on politics. She joined the world of political PR as the Texas press coordinator for the re-election of Ronald Reagan in 1984.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.
