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Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Nov. 16, 2005 / 14 Mar-Cheshvan, 5766

Motherhood is a wonderful thing, but ...

By Tucker Carlson


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | In 1998, I went to a breakfast in Los Angeles where the governor of Texas was speaking. I'd woken up that morning barely aware of George W. Bush. I left the meal impressed by him. Over the next year I wrote several stories about Bush, including a magazine profile that took months to complete.


I flew back and forth to Austin, talked to Bush's friends, family and classmates, took his staff out to dinner. I had several long interviews with Bush himself. Long before the Republican primaries, I became convinced Bush was headed to the White House. At the podium, he was a mediocre speaker, but he was brilliant — Clinton-level good — with individuals. I have never before or since seen a man work a room more effectively. Bush seemed to have great judgment about people.


And for the most part, he did. But I always wondered about Karen Hughes. Hughes, a former local TV reporter from Texas who oversaw media relations in the governor's office and later on the Bush campaign, was one of Bush's closest confidants. I once saw her snap at her boss, right to his face in the most embarrassing possible way. He didn't flinch. Obviously Bush thought so highly of her, he gave her a pass. I have no idea why. Hughes always struck me as not only dishonest, but thoroughly average. Her main contribution to Bush's speeches appeared to be her insistence that the public — formerly known as "Americans" or "voters" or "men and woman" — be always and everywhere referred to as "moms and dads." Every time I heard Bush repeat a talking point that was patronizingly simplistic and dumb, I assumed it was Karen Hughes speaking.


The rest of the story is well known: Despite her limitations, Karen Hughes not only survived the campaign, she moved up to the White House, and remains in the inner ring of Bush's private circle. Not long ago, Bush appointed her Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, our ambassador to the Islamic world. Today, she was in Pakistan handing out aid to earthquake victims.


There aren't yet any detailed reports of what Hughes has said while in Pakistan, so it's hard at this point to criticize her trip. But if her appearances in the region last month are any guide, she's certain to embarrass America.


Hughes went to the Middle East in October on what was billed as "a listening tour." Among the journalists on the trip was ABC's Jonathan Karl, a former print reporter who writes well and takes excellent notes. He later filed a detailed account for the Weekly Standard. Here's a brief excerpt:


"I go as an official of the U.S. government, but I'm also a mom, a working mom," she told reporters on the flight from Washington to Cairo.


To college students in Cairo: "You've heard my title, but that's the fancy stuff. I am really a mom."


"My most important job is mom," she said in an interview with NBC News. "I still have to pinch myself a little when I am sitting in a meeting with the king [of Saudi Arabia] and realize that I'm there representing our country."


At a joint press conference in Turkey: "I am a mom, and I love kids. I love all kids."


It goes on. You get the flavor. By the end of the trip, Hughes had so annoyed a group of Saudi women, they barked at her. So much for winning hearts and minds. G-d knows what she's saying to the Pakistanis right now.


And it matters. In Tuesday's wire service account of Hughes's trip, she is quoted as calling Pakistan "one of America's most loyal partners in the war on terror." For once Hughes is right. Pakistan really matters. Pervez Musharraf, for all his many faults, is a vital bulwark against Islamist parties that would love to control the country and its nuclear weapons. Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, may be riddled with al-Qaida sympathizers, but it still provides us with invaluable information about terrorist threats. We have an interest in courting public opinion in Pakistan.


Maybe the Pakistanis do care that Karen Hughes is a mom. Maybe they are yearning to be lectured at by a humorless kindergarten teacher posing as a high-level diplomat. On the other hand, maybe they're not. It's not a chance we ought to take.


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JWR contributor Tucker Carlson is a journalist, college instructor, public speaker. He hosts MSNBC's "The Situation with Tucker Carlson" each weeknight at 11 p.m. Comment by clicking here.


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