AP is reporting AEI’s James Glassman will replace Karen Hughes.
Initial thoughts:
- This breaks the trend of women.
- As Chairman of BBG, he actually has experience with public diplomacy (plus other related experience, check his bio at AEI)
More later.
Doesn’t it seem likely that Glassman is a tainted personage? It seems to me that the AEI connection is the first disqualification unless your ultimate goal is the increased corporatization of the public face of US diplomacy. (And it most likely is the goal of this administration.) However, the very sphere in which our public diplomacy needs the most work – the volatile Middle East – seems unlikely to be receptive to the presentations from an ideologue from an ideological organization that is so closely associated with the Likud Party.I read Dow 36,000, as I’m sure you did, and found it intellectually unconvincing. He made several macroeconomic errors, which have been addressed in other quarters.
But then, on the other hand, maybe a glib huckster snake oil salesman is exactly the image Mr Cheney wants to project. However, I would have thought that his 30 year history of doing business in the Middle East would have taught him that although money may talk, bullshit walks.