It’s hard to imagine now, with the U.S. bogged down in Iraq and resented in countries around the world, but there was a time not so many decades ago that America actually succeeded in exporting its own values. In the post-World War II years, a series of propaganda films and economic incentives sought to convince Europe that democracy was the best path for everyone, and the plan worked. Today, “Washington is awash in people muttering about the urgent need for better public diplomacy, but the current administration’s attempts to reinvent it have met, mostly, with distress and sometimes mockery.”