The U.S. State Department regularly brings groups of foreign journalists to the United States on study tours. At any time of year, in any year, there's a lot to study in the U.S., and these visits are among the State Department's more successful public diplomacy activities. But this year, bringing a group of journalists to the U.S. on Super Tuesday is a can't miss enterprise.
Last week, I met in San Francisco with one such group of 21 foreign journalists — all first-time visitors to the U.S. They came from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe. We talked about the primaries that had just taken place and I remarked on Senator Obama's failure to gain support among Latino voters. It appeared that there was a new ethnic divide. White Americans easily voted for an African-American on Super Tuesday, but Latino Americans did not.
This observation had an interesting resonance with the Latin American journalists in the group. (Brazil, Ecuador and Mexico were among the countries represented.) “The same thing happens in our countries,” one of the journalists noted. Could it be that the U.S. experience this year could help blacks break barriers throughout the hemisphere?
Later that day, four of the journalists spoke to a gathering hosted by the Institute of International Education, moderated by former Clinton Ambassador to Luxembourg James Hormel. You can hear the program and judge the impact yourself. I might mention that the hundred or so Americans in the audience were fascinated by the foreign journalists’ observations — an indication of the influence that such visits have on the host country as well.
