A World View of America

Karen Hughes was nominated on March 14th to become undersecretary of state for public diplomacy. Here’s a story. Ms. Hughes, a long-time advisor to the President, is facing one of the hardest jobs in America – trying to convince the world that America is not bad.

Unfortunately for Ms. Hughes the state of world public opinion of America is not bad. It is awful. Anti-Americanism is at an all-time high, especially in the Muslim world where American policies are seen as inimical to their values and American rhetoric about freedom and democracy are seen as hypocritical (a sentiment that the authors of the Yellow Line agree with… to a point).

The Yellow Line wishes Ms. Hughes success. But, it’s going to take a lot more than a successful marketing campaign to change global public opinion, as her two predecessors found out. I’m sure we’ll see results soon…. After all, can Communist China really do enough to maintain its spot above the US in global opinion polls?