The longer Condoleezza Rice answered questions in her confirmation hearing yesterday, the more logical President Bush’s decision to give her the assignment began to look. Quite apart from the symbolism of it all, as this extraordinary exemplar of the American dream faced the aging senators, we were struck by her declaration in respect of public diplomacy, and of a kind that would evince a deep resonance with the president’s foreign policy vision. We noted her genuflection toward the general importance of democracy in the Middle East, particularly her quotation of Natan Sharansky’s new book. We also noted her enthusiasm at the prospect of traveling to carry out the president’s goals, a contrast with Secretary Powell, though there is no need to denigrate his stay-at-home personality.

The hearings suggest that the nominee and the president both perceive a problem with America’s image abroad. For those of us who are unwilling to retreat on policy, the issue becomes what kind of public diplomacy we need. There are two broad sorts. The first seeks to promote and explain administration policies. The second seeks to convince others that they ought to love us. In our view, the administration should overlook the second conception and concentrate on the first. There are quite enough sources for finding out about our liberties, society, and culture from the Internet and CNN. What is lacking is what the administration itself can uniquely do: foster support for the president’s objectives.

The key practitioners of public diplomacy in the first Bush term – such as Charlotte Beers of the State Department – evinced little feel for ideology or political warfare. They were corporate creatures who regarded their job as “branding America” like soap powder. A successful advocate of public diplomacy will not be cut from that mould. Ms. Rice states that it is American embassies that are on the front line of fighting this battle for world opinion, yet it has been clear in recent years that some diplomats are downright hostile to the president and unwilling to advocate for administration policy. It’s clear that if she is to succeed at public diplomacy, Ms. Rice will have to change the culture of Foreign Service officers.

In this sense, Ms. Rice may yet have in front of her the kind of battle that the director of central intelligence, Porter Goss, is fighting at the CIA. She should act with the same dispatch as her colleague at Langley and purge those who cannot get used to the fact that the times they are a changin’. Personnel is policy, but long-term change cannot simply be accomplished with a small praetorian guard of loyal aides, as Jas. Baker sought to do during his tenure at Foggy Bottom. She needs to recruit a new cadre of reform-minded younger officers, as Mr. Rumsfeld has done in the armed forces. One can expect that it will be trench warfare all the way in the next four years – and that’s just inside the building.