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aI qualities America inspires would warm the heart of any marketing manager. As an ice-breaking exercise, I asked everyone I interviewed on my trip to free-associate the first word they thought about when they hear “America.” There were numerous cynics (“greedy,” “consumerism,” “McDonald’s’’) and the occasional outlier (“Sex and the City”), but a majority repeated affirmative terms like melting pot, power, democracy, modernity. Even a majority of jaded Newsweek—Daily Beast poll respondents said that the U.S. had a positive effect on the world—the highest of any nation we asked about. Blend it all together, and that’s an image of America well positioned for the new Arab World. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_025027