Price Floyd (State Dept. Media Affairs dir): Reconnecting with the world

[babylonsister]

From TP: Until recently, Price Floyd was director of media affairs at the State Department. He has now written an op-ed about the difficulties of trying to sell the Bush administration’s policies to the public:

http://www.star-telegram.com/245/story/114346.html

Reconnecting with the world
By PRICE FLOYD
Special to the Star-Telegram

To turn a famous Hollywood movie quote on its head: What we don't have here is a failure to communicate.

Since 9-11, the State Department has undertaken an unprecedented effort to reach audiences both in the U.S. and overseas to explain our foreign policy objectives. My former office there arranged more than 6,500 interviews in the past six years, about half of those with international media. On any given day, senior department officials, including the secretary of state, were doing four or five interviews.

Yet during this time, poll after poll showed an alarming trajectory of increased animosity toward America and this administration in particular, both here and abroad.

This contradiction -- reaching a larger audience than ever before to explain our foreign policy goals and objectives, while the support for those policies fell -- underscores the gap between how our actions have been perceived and how we want them to be perceived.

We have eroded not only the good will of the post-9-11 days but also any residual appreciation from the countries we supported during the Cold War. This is due to several actions taken by the Bush administration, including pulling out of the Kyoto Protocol (environment), refusing to take part in the International Criminal Court (rule of law), and pulling out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (arms control). The prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib and the continuing controversy over the detainees in Guantanamo also sullied the image of America.

Collectively, these actions have sent an unequivocal message: The U.S. does not want to be a collaborative partner. That is the policy we have been "selling" through our actions, which speak the loudest of all.

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