I wonder if she was listening to us?

There's a great piece on Bush's uber PR person, Karen Hughes over on the Huffington Post. Awhile back we wondered how she was going to measure her success in her new job and argued that the reason for the lack of progress was due to the lack of accountability. Sounds like she was listening. She now cites these statistics as proof that the US PR plan is working.

"87% of participants in our programs have a better understanding of the United States and 73% have more favorable attitudes toward our country as a result of their participation. ... So we've really expanded our exchange programs. When I came, the year before I arrived, we had 27,000 people participate. This year we'll have almost 40,000."

I have no way of checking those statistics and for all we know the methodology could well be suspect, but at least she's showing a lot more accountability that her predecessors. I'm not quite ready to call her a Measurement Maven, but  at least she's out of the  "Menace" category -- as least as far as measurement goes. 

Comments

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Katie,

It is good to see that those in the administration are at least using the word accountability now.

I'm not a Bush hater (fairly agnostic towards politics), so take this for what it's worth -- but I can't believe that 73 percent of anyone in the middle east have favorable attitudes towards our country. Hatred towards us and our programs just continues to grow in that part of the world.

As you wrote, who knows about the methodology for this study...or even if these figures just came out of thin air.

Cheers