That stuff has been gone for at least two decades. Think about it.

This isn’t your father’s VOA any more. It’s sleek, efficient and professional, thank you.

The last straw was being informed that the guy in the back of the bullpen - the one who kept nodding off to sleep and scrambling to attention when the hot ashes burned through his shirt - was not just being a nice guy and waiting for his wife to finish her shift. He was also a supervisor and was on shift.

What’s the phrase…good enough for government work?

For the last several years of the Bush administration, proponents have pressed their case for doing so on Capitol Hill. Several studies and reports have also endorsed this course, advocating an end to the BBG, and re-creating the spirit if not the resources and capabilities of the former USIA that disappeared under the Clinton administration.

Along with this potential integration of current broadcasting efforts into some sort of Defense Department-linked structure, we also hear the continuing drumbeat for the enhancement of soft power (see Defense Secretary Gates’ remarks since amplified by many others).

And comes the recent piece from the Heritage Foundation in which Helle Dale, Tony Blankley and Oliver Horn hold forth on the need for an integrated national strategy or doctrine, a clearly stated mission, and more coordination between government agencies.

They make positive points that U.S. public diplomacy has lacked personnel and resources, and thankfully they inveigh against handing international communication tasks to the Pentagon. But they still pound away on this question of the lack of an “integrated national strategy and doctrine” and propose that U.S. international broadcasting be placed under a new Assistant Director for Information Programs.

Unfortunately, this would merely accelerate and perhaps make permanent what has been happening for years, as Quo Vadis rightly observes, under Democratic and Republican administrations.

That is, that the decades-old and much defended principle of REPORTING THE NEWS, by the Voice of America, a practice that newer organizations only adopted from VOA and its Charter which was made law in the 1970’s, has been tarnished by association with government information programs, regardless of whose minds they’re trying to win over.

James Glassman, during his tenure as Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, has played both sides of this game.

When it has been useful for him, in order to hold back the anger and resentment among journalists and others in the BBG building down on Independence Avenue, he has assured them that their mission hasn’t changed, that it has not become one only of broadcasting to and changing the hearts and minds of our enemies.

However, in higher-profile appearances, in news conferences and in the media, he has happily continued to walk on the edge, emphasizing the importance of doing all of this to un-brainwash al-Qaida and those that now or in the future would accept its ideology and support it.

Decades ago — in that same building where members of the BBG over the years participated in the steady dismantling of VOA’s worldwide broadcasting capabilities, attending meetings that have been closed to employees and the general public — a petition was drawn up by international broadcast professionals supporting INDEPENDENCE for VOA.

Unfortunately, that dream is for the most part no longer alive anywhere in those halls. U.S. international broadcasting long ago took the “other” fork in the road, away from the BBC’s model of a fiercely independent organization (though BBC has had its lapses) that expanded aggressively, and today enjoys a worldwide multimedia audience that dwarfs that of BBG operations in quality and respect.

When Barack Obama, or his staff members, contacted VOA during the political and civil crisis in Kenya, and a VOA report incorporated his comments about the situation, it occurred to some that he might take the kind of interest in U.S. international broadcasting that Ronald Reagan took in the 1980’s.

An infusion of resources, and a renewed commitment would be welcome. But one hopes President-elect Obama will avoid the mistake of further embedding VOA and U.S. international broadcasting in an ever-expanding alphabet soup of government bureaucracies.

If he were to apply the enthusiasm and determation of his “Yes We Can” campaign to the U.S. government-funded broadcasting, he might actually be willing to listen to proposals to finally eliminate the links that have prevented VOA and other “entities” from attaining the kind of credibility they might under a completely independent structure, based not on things like “soft power” but on the same journalistic principles the United States has protected and promoted since we were created.

For those reading (and one hopes this, Quo Vadis and other comments somehow get to the president-elect) this all may be preaching to the converted, or barking up the wrong tree. But at this time of transition and great opportunity, it needs to be stated.