Some bloggers are astonished, outraged, or stupefied by the apparent cluelessness of our goodwill ambassador to the world, Ms. Soccer Mom Hughes. Here, Jeff Jarvis ridicules her idea of “making arrival at the airport friendlier” for foreigners.

Well, yes. It sounds utterly ludicrous…until you think about why this woman, without whom GWB would not have been elected (she made him palatable to those Republicans who were in doubt) decided that this would be her message. And about who she is delivering it to. At that point, it starts to look almost clever (in a ladies’ auxiliary kind of way…)

Who was her message aimed at? For one, pro-war Americans who are worried about being too aggressive and hawkish. (It appeals to their very American sense of fair play.) Way, way more important, however, it extends empathy to American Muslims who are disturbed, hurt, upset, fearful, anxious, and unsettled by the acts of fanatics who have turned their faith into a nihilistic political ideology and who threaten their security.

Apart from showing that political correctness is not the exclusive province of the left, this “compassionately conservative” line that Hughes is peddling (for example, “we’re not very nice to strangers”) is actually a shrewd way to get through to ordinary people going about their business. (Obviously, newshounds and bloggers do not qualify; what we inevitably forget is that most people are not addicted to the news, to politics, or to speaking their minds via keyboard and broadband—they get a snippet of “news” here or a soundbite there and continue going about their business.)

To get your point across to them—and we area talking about most Americans—it needs to be pitch-perfect. Thus far, the Republicans, with their evolved understanding of PR (i.e., they don’t believe it is the spawn of the devil), have been really good at creating these messages.