THE BUSINESS OF AMERICA
“Japanese and American management is 95 percent the same, and
differs in all important respects.”1—Takeo Fujisawa, cofounder of Honda Motor Company
BY 2004, KEITH REINHARD HAD BEEN AN AD AGENCY CEO FOR twenty years, but he had never been more than a tourist on Capitol Hill. And if he had planned a family excursion with his grandchildren to the nation’s capital, it would not have been in the sticky days of August. But he had more than the weather on his mind. Reinhard was about to testify before a congressional committee. And not just any committee, but the House subcommittee considering the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations on public diplomacy. Three years after surveying his own foreign employees about their attitudes toward America, and just a few months after incorporating Business for Diplomatic Action, Reinhard had accumulated enough credibility to testify alongside the former and present undersecretaries of state for public affairs.
That, of course, was part of his problem. He didn’t want to be identified with either of them—neither with Charlotte Beers, who fairly or not, had been typecast as an “ad gal,” nor with Patricia Harrison, a political appointee and former cochair of the Republican National Committee. Over three years, Reinhard had pored over everything he could find on the issue of anti-Americanism, analyzed every survey, met with every expert who would make room on his calendar. After all that, he was pretty sure there was no “silver bullet,”
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