CHICAGO—One theme touched on during yesterday's sessions at the SIOR 2013 Fall World Conference was branding. Former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, for example, spoke to the opening general session on America's brand, both what it is and how it has been damaged in recent years. “We've got this incredible piece of real estate,” he said, referring to the US, its economic resources, and its rich cultural and ethnic diversity. He then asked, “if that's the product, what's the brand? Why is the idea of America very appealing?”

Ridge, who was also the first US secretary of homeland security, said he found it striking that many foreigners he spoke with during those years, even ones strongly opposed to many of the Bush Administration's policies such as the Iraq War, “still loved the idea of America. There's a level of expectation that we conduct business in a certain way.”

And things like the prison at Guantanamo Bay have hurt those expectations. Although Ridge was careful to say he did not disagree with the establishment of the prison, he had foreign friends disturbed by the notion that the US would take accused terrorists away “and leave them there forever without formal adjudication. It wasn't location, it was adjudication.” A top official in the interior ministry of an American ally, for example, once told him, “you can't keep them there forever because that's not the American way.”

But Ridge also said that promoting what he called the American brand within other countries should not be left solely in the hands of government. With each friend or potential ally, he believes we should ask, “how connected are we on a business-to-business basis?” Potential conflicts can be avoided “when you build and sustain business relationships.”

Still, the present state of national politics will make such progress more difficult, Ridge believes. “On both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue there has been an absolute lack of leadership.” He directly criticized the Obama administration for its caution on Syria, but also disapproved of the general tone in Washington DC. “I like passion and conviction; but directed toward goals you can achieve.” He recalled his days as a centrist congressman in the 1980s, when many of his older colleagues were products of the Great Depression and WW II. “On certain issues, it was more important to think like an American rather than an ideologue.”