More on Bush PR Maven Hughes’ Departure

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Slate‘s Fred Kaplan weighs in on Karen Hughes’ decision to quit her job as undersecretary of state to burnish America’s image abroad and return to Texas:

It may be that, as [Hughes] focused more on the substance and less on the flash, she realized that what she’d been asked to do simply couldn’t be done. If the measure of success was how well she was selling U.S. policy, she was failing because there was no good story to sell.

“My guess is that the next year is going to be brutal for anyone doing ‘message’ control and with the elections they will be irrelevant as well,” a recent Foggy Bottom denizen explains Hughes departure to me. “Life is too short, so she threw in the towel.”

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate