All of which is where Tucker Eskew comes in. A sandy-haired good ol’ boy in his late 30s from an upscale family in upstate South Carolina, a veteran of 20 years of hardball Southern politics and public relations, Eskew is in charge of a new White House enterprise with a grandiose title: the Office of Global Communications. Its task right now: to ensure that the world knows that Iraqis are grateful for our presence.
So far, America hasn’t been very good at making its global case. At least that’s what the polls and street demonstrations show. In the 18 months since 9/11, this country has gone from noble victim to rogue imperium in the judgmental eyes of the world.
A HARD SELL
Paradoxically, the administration now is banking on war to improve its image as a peacemaker in the world. It’s not an easy sell, but one in which this administration–from the president on down–firmly believes.
The evidence that they believe it? The Bush administration decision to “embed” journalists and camera crews with invading American and British forces in the gulf. If Bush and his War Council weren’t convinced that they would have a good story to tell (and sell) they would have reacted otherwise–and would have had a precedent from the Gulf War to follow. At that time, the media got only limited access to the battle.
The psywar for the soul of the world will begin as soon as the fighting does. The battle plan calls for a distinct force of Americans and British to split off from the main contingent and speed toward Basra in the south of Iraq in the earliest stages of the war. The aim isn’t just to secure that city, but to capitalize on what is expected to be a friendly reception by locals who, for a host of religious, ethnic and tribal reasons have long since come to hate Saddam’s Baghdad-based regime. First smiles matter most.
Technology has turned the battlefield itself into a real-time theater of propaganda. With satellite transmission and small cameras, the media will be able to beam to the world–instantly–events as they happen. “Embedded” with the Coalition of the Willing, they will see what the coalition sees–and so will the world at large. If the smiles fade, or fail to materialize, the world will see that, too. But the members of the War Council have assured the president that the first wave will be positive.
The Office of Global Communication, in concert with its counterpart in Tony Blair’s No. 10 Downing St., will have its own capability to cycle words and pictures through the world, and to counter the propaganda of Iraq and its sympathizers. There will be no tougher–or more important–battle in this deadly war.
GENTEEL PEDIGREE
Eskew has an interesting background for such a task. He has genteel pedigree: from a prominent newspaper family in Greenville, S.C., a graduate of the University of South in Sewanee, Tenn. But he grew up playing the hardest of the hardball in politics, on the cutting edge of the Republican Party’s effort (now largely successful) to take over the South. He apprenticed with the late Lee Atwater, the Baby Boomer Bad Boy of the new GOP. He worked for Carroll Campbell, who began a career that led to the governorship of South Carolina by leading anti-busing demonstrations in Greenville. Eskew worked in the campaigns of the Two Bushes, and helped Bush the Younger win his no-holds-barred triumph over John McCain in the vicious 2000 GOP primary in South Carolina.
Eskew has shown that he knows how to help win when there is overwhelming force (that of the Bush family in GOP politics) and he is on terrain he knows well. But we’re not in South Carolina anymore. The “voters” are everywhere, and the whole world is watching.
