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PUBLIC DIPLOMACY….Public diplomacy cheerleader Marc Lynch is unhappy over the news that Hillary Clinton may be about to choose an undersecretary of state for public diplomacy whose roots are in marketing, not statecraft. I won’t pretend that this propsect gives me the same heartburn that it gives Marc, but I certainly agree with his basic criticism:

I don’t know Judith McHale at all, and obviously have nothing against her personally. But the position of Under-Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs should go to someone with experience in and a vision for public diplomacy, and who will be in a position to effectively integrate public diplomacy concerns into the policy-making process. Appointing someone with no experience in public diplomacy but with a resume which “involves selling a message” has already been tried: the first post-9/11 Under-Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Charlotte Beers, whose tenure lasted only 17 months (October 2001-March 2003), focused on “branding” America through television advertising showing happy Muslim-Americans, and is generally considered to be an utter failure.

Actually, I think Marc is being too nice here. It hasn’t just been tried once, it’s been tried three times. After Charlotte Beers left, the position was briefly given to Margaret Tutwiler, who at least had a bit of diplomatic experience, but for the past four years it’s been held first by Bush pal Karen Hughes, who was famously clueless about anything beyond the borders of the United States, and then by James Glassman, who was only marginally more qualified. Neither one of them had any serious overseas experience at all.

Maybe Judith McHale will be brilliant at the job. Who knows? We’ll have to learn more about her. But it would sure be nice to get someone for this job who speaks a few languages, has spent a lot of time overseas, and doesn’t think of the job as merely a branding exercise. Stay tuned.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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