James Fallows, Altantic Monthly national correspondent and former Carter speechwriter, originally questioned Glassman's appointment, and after sleeping on it, (or after a late-night phone call from…?) took it back the next day.
Michael Currie Schaffer of The New Republic sarcastically wrote: "Luckily, the America-hating masses of Pakistan probably never had the chance to follow Glassman's cheerleading into the stock market back before the bubble burst in 2000." Undersecretary Glassman shouldn't fret too much, though. In the eyes of the pundits it would be difficult to do a worse job than his predecessor Karen Hughes. Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post wrote: "Hughes wasn't hired to create cultural change inside the State Department; she was hired to improve America's image abroad. And she failed miserably at that task, at least in part because she failed to use her close relationship with Bush to get him to stop doing the things that made her job so impossible." Another blogger opined: "Departing is the shockingly ineffectual Karen Hughes. All right, I take that back. Predictably ineffectual, given that she was nothing more than a beneficiary of the spoils system." Despite what the bloggers say it's hard for the polling numbers to make Hughes' performance look much better. Many global polls show that attitudes toward the US are at an all-time low. At the an impromptu appearance President Bush made at a State Department event bidding farewell to Karen Hughes, he joked: “I wouldn't be standing here without Karen Hughes,” he said of his long-time advisor. “One of her jobs was to teach me how to speak English.”
If the President is looking to learn from the incoming Undersecretary I would warn him against taking Glassman's advice on the stock market.