Ooh - just missed!

So close, yet so far.

Washington, Feb. 4 - Margaret D. Tutwiler, in her first public appearance as the State Department official in charge of public diplomacy, acknowledged Wednesday that America's standing abroad had deteriorated to such an extent that "it will take us many years of hard, focused work" to restore it. ...

In testimony before a House appropriations subcommittee, she agreed with the main findings of an independent panel that American outreach has suffered from budget cuts and neglect since the end of the cold war.

Not that our "deteriorated standing" could have resulted from anything we might have done over that time, of course.