Bush names commentator to public diplomacy role

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Tuesday picked a conservative commentator and former financial columnist to oversee the effort to improve the U.S. image abroad, replacing long-time Bush aide Karen Hughes.

James Glassman is Bush's nominee as Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, the White House said. The job, which requires Senate confirmation, is aimed at countering negative opinions of the United States around the world.

Surveys around the world show high levels of anti-Americanism in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Negative opinions are strongest in the Muslim world, according to the Pew Research Center.

Hughes, a close confidant of the president from his days as Texas governor, had announced in October that she planned to leave her job to return to her home in Austin, Texas.

Hughes, who had run communications for Bush's first presidential election campaign, had been one of the few remaining members of his original inner circle in the administration.

Glassman has worked as a columnist for the Washington Post and is the former president of the Atlantic Monthly magazine and a former publisher on the New Republic. He has also appeared on a number of television talk shows and has been a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

Amid the 1990s stock market boom, Glassman wrote a book, Dow 36,000, that said equities prices were undervalued and would keep rising.

Bush earlier this year named Glassman as chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, a federal agency that oversees government-sponsored international broadcasting activities, including the Voice of America, Alhurra and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

(Reporting by Caren Bohan; editing by Eric Walsh)