I mean, that's one of our strongest arguments. And soft power also means a having confidence in what we have to share with the world. And i think we have a lot to share with the world. We also have aspects of our society that, frankly, need, need a lot of work and a lot of improvement. But a soft power can draw on all the things that are so remarkable, attractive, admirable about our country. And you have to work at it. You can't just say we'rethe the only super power. We're number one. You know, when we say we want you to do something, you just do it because you need us. Ah, that kind of approach, if it ever worked is, is not going to work in the modern world. And we've got to actually make an effort to make the case for why what we have to offer is valuable. You know,

when we think about that stability and the brand of america and so on, i can just see why a diplomat would, would just understand that you've got to have continuity, you've got to have consistency, youv got to have a save staff. You need to have keep the politics out of it and just be pragmatic. Absolutely. Eric reuben, the president of the american foreign ser association, is sharing thoughts on the role of american diplomacy in these challenging times. Eric joined the foreign service after graduating from yale in 19 85. He served overseas assignments in honduras, ukraine, tiland and in moscow. And he was a security affairs officer for the us. Government on central and eastern europe at the time the soviet union ended. I was just thinking, as we've been discussing an and i'm so inspired by the value of of our diplomatic corps. Have you, in your 35 yearsof work as a diplomat, have you ever thought much about the role of the mediaeval jester? You know, i'm just fascinated how in the middle ages, they didn't have a diplomatic corps, but the king paid the jester to be annoying, to go out from the castle, to go into the barrios and learn what was going on in the gutters and with the peop who were different from the people inside the walls of the castle. And then the jestur would come back and tell the king the truth. I remember back in the 19 eighties, being upset with foreign service staff that that seemed to be doing just the opposite. You know, they'd go all the way to nicaragua and they'd have dinner on top of the big hotel in managua as the intercontinental hotel. And they made policy by talking with loca lelites and never getting out into the barios. They ended up telling the king not what he needed to know, but what he wanted to know. Does that relate to your challenge as a diplomatan? And did you ever get that mediaeval jester's angle?