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The scene: a packed auditorium at a major Cairo university.
The speaker: a leader in the U.S. government, with a compelling personal story.
The message: American foreign policy is "idealistic." The world should embrace the "challenge of listening," while seeking "a new standard of justice for our time."
The impact: not much.
On June 20, 2005, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice delivered an ode to liberty, democracy and a bright future in U.S.-Arab cooperation to a group of students in Cairo. As an effort to sell Arabs on American foreign policy, it was a measurable failure: three years later, a piddling 6% of Egyptians told Gallup pollsters that they approved of the job performance of U.S. leaders.
Now, President Barack Obama is set to attempt a makeover. He will appear at a different Cairo university on Thursday to deliver a speech to the entire Muslim world. Not unlike Condi Rice, Obama is expected to offer an idealistic vision of the future, proclaiming a common purpose as allies who can celebrate their differences and embrace their similarities. But Obama's team hopes to succeed where Rice failed, in changing the deteriorating dynamic between the U.S. and the Muslim world. (See pictures of Islam's soft revolution.)
In appealing to the Muslim world, Obama starts with an advantage over Rice: his biography, which ranges from his international family, which included Muslim members, to his opposition to the Iraq War. As early as April 2007, candidate Obama had ventured that his unique story "allows me to say things to them that other Presidents might not be able to say."
Even before he speaks, Obama has registered considerably higher approval ratings in Muslim countries than his predecessors. A recent Gallup poll found 1 in 4 Egyptians now approves of the U.S. leadership. Governments in the Arab world have welcomed the new tone adopted by Obama in his early outreach efforts. "They are discussing issues, showing their concerns, but they also listen," Egypt's Foreign Minister Ahmed Ali Aboul Gheit said of Obama's team during a recent visit to Washington. "I think they are very much different from the Bush Administration." Last month, Jordan's King Abdullah II enthused on Meet the Press, "In the Middle East, this President provides hope ... There's a collective hope that there is a new America."
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