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Campaign Methods Put to Test in Tour To Boost U.S. Image
Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes stressed family and friendship themes during her Middle East tour, as when she posed with children in Istanbul.
(By Osman Orsal -- Associated Press)
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Hughes was instrumental in Bush's 2000 campaign, and she demonstrated during the trip that she was adept at using the tools of an experienced political operative. She even took along what she called two citizen-ambassadors -- a State Department intern who is a Muslim and a Wisconsin Democrat who teaches school -- to demonstrate the diversity of the United States and the bipartisan character of her mission.
In her public statements, she stressed common support for goals, such as a Palestinian state and ending the violence in Iraq, while ignoring or playing down the deep concerns over U.S. tactics to achieve those objectives. And Hughes used the power of repetition, saying almost the same thing, word for word, in almost every interview and public forum.
Sometimes the result was banality: Explaining U.S. goals for Palestinians, Hughes said it was "to have the experience of having children and families." And in Ankara, the Turkish capital, she gushed: "I love all kids. And I understand that is something I have in common with the Turkish people -- that they love children."
Hughes repeatedly said -- three times during a brief interview with al-Jazeera television, for example -- that Bush was the "very first president" to support a Palestinian state. Clinton devoted the last months of his presidency to seeking a peace deal that would have created a Palestinian state, and in a speech before he left office, Clinton said he believed there should be a "sovereign, viable" Palestinian state. But Hughes said her statement was accurate because Bush made it an official statement of U.S. policy to reach that goal.
Hughes told reporters traveling with her that she was surprised Bush didn't get more credit in the region for calling for a Palestinian state. Several people who met with her said that they considered the Bush administration biased in favor of Israel and that it had done little in five years to support the goal.
Hughes, a former television journalist, also kept an eye on the media images. After a tense confrontation with Turkish women over the Iraq war, for instance, she overrode her security detail to stroll through the cobblestone streets of old Ankara. The result was video of her greeting shopkeepers, the perfect antidote to the clash that had just occurred.
In Egypt, when she asked college students for a show of hands indicating who had voted in the recent presidential election, only one shot up. The next day, she worked into her standard speech a heartwarming story about meeting someone who had participated in the first multiparty election in Egypt's history.
