“Look around. There’s a reason there aren’t any Democrats here. They’re scared. You think you can take me? You wanna piece of me?”

As if getting caught asleep at the switch wasn’t bad enough for Senate Democrats unprepared for the nomination of John Roberts, they punctuated the week with a flat-line by awarding a free pass to Bush advisor Karen Hughes at her confirmation hearing on Friday.

Hughes, nominated to become Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, has been a Bush aide for most of his political career, an architect of his administration’s media stonewalling, and one of the officials called to testify before Patrick Fitzgerald’s grand jury about her knowledge of the Plame leak case. As the minority party, Democrats hold no power to launch investigations or hold hearings, and therefore have no excuse whatsoever for allowing Hughes to go unquestioned. The last few days have seen some rather pathetic speculation that their no-show was somehow part of a larger strategy. Possibly, but since they won’t have another chance to question Hughes on the record, face-to-face, it would be a particularly bad strategy. And even that seems unlikely given this quote from Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Joe Biden:

“I am particularly interested in and supportive of the nomination of Karen Hughes to be undersecretary of state for public diplomacy. ”
[...]
“I believe that she is highly qualified because of her professional background, and, importantly, enjoys the full confidence of the president and the secretary of state.

She will bring new energy and creativity to our public diplomacy efforts. I commend the president for choosing her and persuading her to return to Washington, and I look forward to working with her for the next three years on this important foreign policy priority.”

At this point, it would be pointless to ask Biden which side he’s on. He seems to have already decided.

Setting aside Biden’s puffery and whether or not it is a good idea to push Rovegate or leave it to Fitzgerald, there remain plenty of unanswered questions about Hughes’ advice to the President, and even more importantly, how she intends to do the difficult and complicated job for which she is nominated.

Karen Hughes is a communications specialist, and like Dan Bartlett, Scott McClellan and Ari Fleischer, her knowledge has allowed the Bush administration to achieve goals unpopular with most Americans at little or no political cost. In her role as senior counselor Hughes reported only Bush and White House Chief of Staff Andy Card. She did not have to face election or confirmation, and her responsibility to maintaining the image of the White House trumped any concern for the truth or the common good as it existed outside the administration. She has repeatedly been the one to step in after the President farts in the face of the American people to tell them that it is the latest designer fragrance.

As Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Hughes will be responsible for making the United States’ case to foreign citizens, but she starts with a credibility gap, both her own and the one she assumes as a member of the Bush administration. Before Bush was in office, she was spinning whoppers about the 2000 Florida recount (calling heavily Jewish Palm Beach County a “Buchanan stronghold“), later became a member of the White House Iraq Group (whose task it was to sell the war in absence of actual evidence), and more recently, distorted John Kerry‘s military service (a fact that makes one think that Kerry, a member of the SFRC, would want to ask Hughes about).

Maybe before Biden decided that Hughes is qualified for this position, he should have considered whether someone who freely compares women who seek abortions with terrorists is suited to the delicate work of diplomacy:

“I think after September 11th the American people are valuing life more and realizing that we need policies to value the dignity and worth of every life. And President Bush has worked to say, let’s be reasonable, let’s work to value life, let’s try to reduce the number of abortions, let’s increase adoptions. The fundamental difference between us and the terror network we fight is that we value every life.”

Anyone holding this position faces an uphill battle, but it’s especially foolish to expect Hughes’ brand of spin to influence the same nations that hold us in contempt for a war she helped sell in the first place. We don’t have a public relations problem in the Arab/Muslim world. They don’t hate us over a misunderstanding that can be patiently explained by a master communicator. In light of our past and current policies supporting murderous tyrants (including Saddam Hussein and many others), we don’t have anything significant that Hughes can promise them as a show of goodwill. Allowing Afghanistan to revert back to warlord control makes even the just war there far from a success, and the chaos in Iraq breeds more hatred and violence with each passing day. The blights on our national conscience that are Abu Ghraib (still subject to cover-up) and Guantánamo (where conditions are so bad that detainees are conducting a hunger strike) make it unthinkable that our credibility and moral authority will every be restored.

Karen Hughes faces what amounts to a fool’s errand. Until the United States stops acting like a slum lord by treating the rest of the world as ghetto tenants, public diplomacy is futile. Not only did Senate Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee have an opportunity to question Hughes on many issues related to her conduct as counselor to the President and her thoughts on how to best execute her new job, they had a responsibility to do it.

Being in the minority means opposing and exposing irresponsible behavior by the majority. The eight Democrats on the SFRC did not serve their constituents or their country well on Friday. Biden, Kerry, and Russ Feingold are all considering runs for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2008. If they can’t do their job in the Senate, they don’t deserve a promotion. And the rest of the members have no excuse either. They will never learn unless they know that their voters are watching, so if you live in Delaware, Maryland, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, California, Florida, or Illinois, please consider making a brief phone call to your state’s Senator on the SFRC.