London
"IT'S NOT MY JOB to get George Bush reelected," snorted a senior State Department officer when asked why he wasn't speaking out to defend the president's foreign policy. Which goes a long way to explaining why America's critics have the field all to themselves in Europe's capitals, while our ambassadors cower behind barricades, in many cases waiting for their subordinates to translate the day's newspapers from a language with which they are unfamiliar. And why one prominent member of Britain's Parliament complained to me that he had nowhere to turn when he needed some data to include in a speech in the House of Commons defending America's policy in Iraq.
Little wonder that Christopher Marquis is able to report in the New York Times (reprinted in the International Herald Tribune for the delectation of overseas America-haters), "America . . . is having a hard time selling itself. The government's public-relations drive to build a favorable impression abroad . . . is a shambles, according to both Republican and Democratic lawmakers, State Department officials and independent experts."
How the mighty have fallen from the days after World War II, when America mounted a broadly successful campaign "to win hearts and minds in Europe," as Jeffrey Gedmin and Craig Kennedy put it in their recent lament in the National Interest, "Selling America--Short." Then, they point out, we had "the Congress for Cultural Freedom, . . . the political opinion magazine Encounter and crucial alliances with leading intellectuals. . . . The Ford Foundation and other
charitable organizations were enlisted in a concerted effort to portray American culture in a fair and positive light." We might not have convinced everyone that we were the good guys in the Cold War, but we convinced enough policymakers to enable us to do what had to be done to defend Western Europe and, ultimately, ourselves.
Now, America's rhetorical guns have fallen silent or, at best, been reduced to a whisper. In Britain, only Tony Blair, risking the wrath of his party and his church, extols the virtue of American values, while William Farish, our ambassador to the Court of St. James, is nowhere to be seen--or heard. Farish was selected for this important post because of three qualifications: He had managed the senior Bush's trust fund during the first Bush presidency, he contributed handsomely to the second Bush's campaign and campaigned at his side, and he shares the queen's interest in horses.
Indeed, one businessman, who had during earlier administrations regularly been invited to various seminars and meetings with our commercial attaché and other embassy personnel, and to a variety of social functions, remarked sarcastically at a recent dinner party that he thought we had closed our U.K. embassy. Another, a prominent ex-pat in the investment business, told me that he had with considerable difficulty lured our ambassador to a business function of the sort routinely attended by his predecessor, then watched in amazement as Farish found it necessary to read his 30-second introductory remarks from an index card.
Even the ambassador's defenders admit that public speaking is not his long suit. Indeed, some damn him with faint praise. Here's Peter Oborne, political editor of the Spectator: "Though unobtrusive to the point of invisibility on London's diplomatic circuit, Farish, who shares a passion for blood-stock with the Queen, enjoys an entrée to royal circles unrivalled by any previous U.S. ambassador." Unfortunately, the hearts and minds we are fighting for in Britain don't reside at Buckingham Palace. The battle is being fought in seminars, on op-ed pages, on talk shows, on television panel programs, and over dinner tables.
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