New at Reason

Julian Sanchez | March 28, 2005

It's an understatement to say that, these days, being the United States' PR agent is a thankless job. But Jonathan Rauch finds some reason for Karen Hughes not to despair as she moves into her new job.

Comments

|3.28.05 @ 10:08AM|#

And cue troll response. . . right . . . now

No credit given to Dubya whatsoever. Any perceived turnaround in foreign opinion must be due to the diligent politicking of Clinton and Jimmy Carter, I tells ya.

|3.28.05 @ 10:39AM|#

VoiceOver:

I'd be a little less skeptical if the main push of this whole "PR" campaign was actual, real actions, and not just propaganda. Call this a "troll response" or whatever else you like, but...I have a hard time getting all warm-n-fuzzy over a government which wages unprovoked war in the name of "freedom", then sets up its own taxpayer funded ad-agency to convince the world how great we are. Excuse me if I don't give Bush "credit"; the "broken window fallacy" applies quite well. Let's say Johnny breaks the neighbor's window. Would you then give him "credit" for going over to his neighbor's and giving a powerpoint presentation on what a great kid he is?

Were it not for our belligerent ultra-interventionist foreign policy in the first place, we'd probably not need our own "look at us, we're so great!" PR agency. So don't pine on about George's plight because he doesn't get "credit".

And, just for the record, neither does Carter, nor our other ultra-interventionist pal, Willy Clinton.

|3.28.05 @ 10:55AM|#

Is there a corollary to Godwin's Law about pre-emptively labeling an entire position as trolling? Maybe there should be...

The real question is probably whether or not it makes sense to use PR voodoo to sell US policy/initiatives abroad.

It actually makes sense to me - I think the US got used to being the default answer to communism, and that's a pretty easy sell.

It SHOULD be an easy sell to be pro-freedom and pro-capitalism, but even on these boards, deep in the heart of US libertarian thought it can be tough.

Go figure some bright bureaucrat decided we need a PR firm of bureaucrats to sell our positions and policies...

|3.28.05 @ 11:19AM|#

It actually makes sense to me - I think the US got used to being the default answer to communism, and that's a pretty easy sell.

That's assuming anyone actually remembers that monicker---as opposed to the newfangled view of the US as World Police, sticking its fingers in the business of every last piece-of-shit country on the planet. Serbia. Kosovo. Bosnia. Haiti. Iraq. Etc. Not to mention the outright support of Israel, which no PR propaganda campaign is going to ever set right. I'm not saying that all this anti-americanism is justified, but only that it's not so simple as to be fixed by a PR campaign-at least not in any meaningful way.

|3.28.05 @ 12:26PM|#

You're right that it's a tough sell to anyone who isn't already on board. But that's always the case for marketing.

As for the outright support of Israel, while I think it's the right thing to do it will make it a tough sell. (Then again, there's the previous paragraph.)

I'm hopeful that some day the populations of most of our foes will realize that the US, like Israel, is merely a scapegoat for the horrors and injustices visited upon them by their governments.

A good PR campaign could help, but it's a force multiplier rather than a force unto itself.

R C Dean|3.28.05 @ 12:34PM|#

Well, lets see, we're not allowed to beat people into agreeing with us, and apparently we're not to talk them into agreeing with us either.

That kind of narrows the options down, doesn't it?

|3.28.05 @ 12:44PM|#

You know, in the grand scheme of the federal budget the small amount spent on PR abroad isn't enough to get me upset.

But I do wonder just what the point is. Regardless of what you think of our foreign policy and opposition to it, actions speak louder than words. If our foreign policy is actually a very good thing and those foreigners are just too decadent and leftist to understand it, how exactly will Karen Hughes turn them around?

And if our foreign policy is unjustified and hyperinterventionist, well, good luck selling it to the skeptics.

Go ahead, try and turn them around, but I'm not optimistic. I think actions do more to influence world opinion than marketing. But if somebody can prove me wrong, well, go for it.

|3.28.05 @ 12:46PM|#

Actually, I take back my statement about actions doing more to influence world opinion. I think symbolism also plays a big role.

For instance, a billion dollars is not enough to make or break Mubarak's thugocracy, so as an action it's almost inconsequential. But as a symbol, well, it makes some people very skeptical (however rightly or wrongly) when a US President talks about freedom abroad.

|3.28.05 @ 1:39PM|#

"Well, lets see, we're not allowed to beat people into agreeing with us, and apparently we're not to talk them into agreeing with us either.

That kind of narrows the options down, doesn't it?"

No, the better option is to talk people into agreeing with us, and only "beat" people into agreeing with us when it's a last resort of self defense.

You see, by listing only those two options, you misrepresent the reality of US foreign policy. It's not just about getting people to agree with us, either via the sword or via the bullhorn. Our previous militarist interventions have not all been about "getting people to agree with us. And this PR campaign isn't just some innocent attempt to "get people to agree with us" either. Your oversimplification is astounding. This is about policing the world at the point of a gun, then trying to talk our way out of it when it comes back to bite us in the ass. Talk is cheap (save for the symbolism Thoreau rightly talks about). Actions speak much louder than propaganda, especially when that propeganda clashes heavily with the reality of our actions. You can't fuck someone up the ass, tell 'em it's a massage, and expect all to be forgiven. PR might not be all bad, but I just highly doubt that it is a real fix to the shitstorms we have created with our ultrainterventionist foreign policy.

|3.28.05 @ 5:01PM|#

I'm not a fan of "intervention" - I thought Kosovo and Somalia were ridiculous. (Haiti I can understand.)

But I have to caveat that... My belief is that when someone goes to war against you and then hides under a rock, you've got two choices: stay at home and hope they don't do it again, or start looking under rocks.

The first couple rocks we've looked under are Afghanistan and Iraq. Some luck in both, but not really what we'd hoped for. Does that mean it's time to go home?

Nope. It means that leadership in other nations should make sure they're not the rock the guys we're looking for are hiding under. If we have to flip their country upside down to look it's bad for their people. And BTW, it means they won't be in charge when we're done doing the rock-flipping.

|3.28.05 @ 6:22PM|#

How's that for a PR message? "Don't be under the same rock we have to flip over to find the bad guys."

- This message brought to you by the State Dept. PR geniuses who thought up "We know he's got the WMD," and the letter W and the number 0.

|3.29.05 @ 8:43AM|#

"My belief is that when someone goes to war against you and then hides under a rock, you've got two choices: stay at home and hope they don't do it again, or start looking under rocks."

I've got no problem "looking under rocks". But, at the same time, perhaps we should take a long, hard look at what got the fuckers so pissed off at us in the first place. Um, can anyone say "ultrainterventionist foreign policy"? No? Oh, sorry, the correct answer was "they hate our freedom". Mmmkaaaay. "Terrrorism" is not something that can be defeated by scouring the world for terrorists and eradicating them. "Terrorism", and especially "anti-american terrorism", is something that transcends individuals, it transcends loosely structured networks. Look under all the rocks you want, but you're not going to end anti-american terrorism with a gun barrel. This is like trying to catch smoke with one hand. Instead, you must go to the source of the smoke, the fire, and do what you can to put it out. Considering that Bin Laden's stated motivation was our interventionist foreign policies, perhaps that would be a good place to start?

"The first couple rocks we've looked under are Afghanistan and Iraq. Some luck in both, but not really what we'd hoped for. Does that mean it's time to go home?"

If you honestly think that waging preemtive war on a toothless nation, whose only real connection to "terror" was severence pay to palestinian suicide bombers, was an effort to find and eradicate terror cells, then, well, I'm not sure what else to say to you. This is about the "bogeyman" (aka "The War on Terror") that has replaced the cold war as "the black hole which keeps the welfare-warfare state alive and well".

"If we have to flip their country upside down to look it's bad for their people."

Yes, because, as we all know, despotic totalitarian governments really care about what's good and bad for their people. Heh, yeah, just as much as our leaders care about those people (aka "collateral damage").

|3.29.05 @ 1:15PM|#

"No, the better option is to talk people into agreeing with us, and only 'beat' people into agreeing with us when it's a last resort of self defense."

Evan, I think we agree on this, but that we disagree on how/when to implement it, and what stage constitutes self-defense. I'd argue that defending nat'l security interests = self-defense and that takes us into murky territory for defining self-defense.

"Instead, you must go to the source of the smoke, the fire, and do what you can to put it out."

Do you have a better solution than what we're doing now? My problem is that tho I don't think we're going about it perfectly, I don't have a better plan.

I've heard it argued that we should withdraw to an isolationist foreign policy, but I don't think that is really going to help. No matter what our foreign policy is, the guys we're looking for are going to be P.O.'d at us.

I think this is like saying that if we'd simply hunkered down and ignored the rest of the world, letting the USSR have a free hand during the Cold War, things would've turned out just fine.

Even if we changed our foreign policy to suit them, at this point it wouldn't matter - you can't redeem "the great Satan" by re-writing State Dept. policies.

Besides, they need something to justify their fight much more than we need to justify a "welfare/warfare state." Who else are they going to rail against if not the US?

Speaking of welfare/warfare, I think alluding that the US is becoming an Orwellian nightmare is a bit premature. In this situation it seems about about as sensible as claiming that we're at war because "they hate our freedom." At least that's vaguely in the ballpark, tho.

The guys we're looking for DO hate our way of life. It's as anti-thetical to their way of life as theirs is to ours. The irony is that we'd be willing to tolerate their wacky religious restrictions on people who adhere to the religion of their own free will, but that's not a reciprocal tolerance.

Sorry, I should have been clearer that I figured the real problem for the "despotic totalitarian governments" in question was the second sentence, not the first: "And BTW, it means they won't be in charge when we're done doing the rock-flipping."