Karen Hughes, a longtime friend of the president, has announced her resignation as undersecretary of state, effective at the end of this year. Hughes was supposed to enhance the image of the United States in the greater Middle East, but, in this week’s issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Stephen Hayes writes that she was never very well suited to the job as she “had never been to the region, had no expertise in the Muslims who largely populate it, and had never shown any real interest in it either.” Hayes goes on:
It showed. On her first trip to the Persian Gulf, she approached foreign dignitaries as if they were soccer moms and began with a campaign slogan: “The four E’s of diplomacy: Engagement, Exchange, Education and Empowerment.” In one meeting, she told her host that the most famous phrase in the Pledge of Allegiance–“One Nation, Under God”–came from the U.S. Constitution. So why did George W. Bush pick Karen Hughes for such a critical mission? Her words upon emerging from a meeting with an Egyptian sheikh provide one clue: “I think I was able to have a wonderful meeting with His Eminence to talk with him about the common language of the heart.” We don’t know what His Eminence thought about his introduction to the common language of the heart. But George W. Bush, who years earlier declared that he had seen into the soul of Vladimir Putin, speaks it fluently. Hughes knows Bush as well as anyone other than his wife. And when Bush needs help on the big issues, he often seeks assistance from those most familiar to him, whatever their qualifications and without regard to what the rest of world might think. And so it was that, as Hughes finished her trip, a reporter approached her for a comment on Bush’s likely Supreme Court nominee: “Harriet would be a wonderful Supreme Court justice!”
This is probably for the best.
