Latest Brownback Effort To Hamstring Public Diplomacy

He once told a group of businessmen he wanted to be the next Jesse Helms -- "Senator No," who operated as a one-man demolition unit against godlessness, independent of his party.

"God's Senator," Jeff Sharlet, Rolling Stone, January 25, 2006

Matt Armstrong of Mountain Runner has provided an excellent rundown of the many problems with Brownback's S.3456 titled “The Strategic Communications Act of 2008.”  Armstrong humbly says "The problems are such that I do not support this bill in its present form."  Given its author, I would hope that all those who are truly interested in public diplomacy treat this bill like the plague that it is.  Consider its source, one of the Senate's most reactionary members.

Senator Sam Brownback, like his late hero, Jesse Helms, has a long history of wanting to emasculate those charged with managing America's engagement with the world through its public diplomacy programs.  This is from the NYT of July 6, 1995:

Representative Sam Brownback, the Kansas Republican who is a prime sponsor of the Congressional effort to abolish [USIA], insists that the private sector should take over the educational exchanges, Radio Free Europe and the Voice of America: "We have to start doing things in a different way."

So too with his current bill, whose "Center would enlist the support of private, non-profit and non-governmental organizations and would enable the new Center to make grants to representatives of the Center in key countries to implement U.S. national strategy on a local level."  I can see it now: FOX News, Rush Limbaugh, The God Network (I made that one up) lining up for government grants to spread Sam's gospel.

According to his Senate website

His colleagues say he is one of the most sincere people in Congress, and even those who don’t agree with him never doubt his conviction and appreciate the respectful way he debates even the most contentious of issues.

Add perseverance and circular thinking to that list: not content with abolishing USIA a decade ago and moving it into State, he'd rather gut State's PD structures and create a new "National Center for Strategic Communications, an agency similar to the now defunct U.S. Information Agency" (from his press release).  Yep, similar to  the very agency which the good Senator helped make defunct.

Please let me know when there's a serious proposal to help present America's message - whatever that is.