March 7, 2008
Harvard Scholar Resigns From Obama Campaign
Last fall, Samantha Power, a professor of public policy at Harvard University, told The Chronicle that advising Sen. Barack Obama on foreign policy was one of the greatest experiences of her professional life. But she added that she was deeply anxious that her blunt style would someday get the campaign into trouble:
[N]ew technologies make the candidate-adviser relationship more perilous than it once was. In theory a student in one of Ms. Power’s Harvard courses might post one of her classroom comments (perhaps wildly out of context) on a blog and create a news-media storm within hours.
“That’s the one thing that terrifies me,” Ms. Power says. “That I’ll say something that will somehow hurt the candidate.” She says that in public lectures and interviews, she sometimes fights the urge to make unkind statements about other candidates. “That’s just not Obama’s style,” she says. “Left to my own devices, I’d articulate my frustrations in a much harsher way.”
Today that fear came to pass. Ms. Power resigned from Mr. Obama’s campaign after The Scotsman, an Edinburgh newspaper, quoted her describing Sen. Hillary Clinton as “a monster.”
Her statement of resignation said in part, “Last Monday I made inexcusable remarks that are at marked variance from my oft-stated admiration for Senator Clinton and from the spirit, tenor, and purpose of the Obama campaign. And I extend my deepest apologies to Senator Clinton, Senator Obama, and the remarkable team I have worked with over these long 14 months.”
Ms. Power, who is affiliated with Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, won the Pulitzer Prize for her 2002 book, “A Problem From Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide. Last month, she published Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World. Just four days ago, a New York Times article casually predicted that she “could very well end up in [Mr. Obama’s] cabinet.”
David Glenn | Posted on Friday March 7, 2008 | PermalinkComments
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If Power had said, for example, that Sen. Clinton’s proposal to freeze interest rates shows that she understands economics no better than her lucky husband, that would have been both “blunt” and insightful. But cursing and calling an opponent names in front of a newspaper reporter is tediously self-centered and sophomoric and contributes nothing to the debate over ideas. I wonder if Power permits this kind of behavior in her classroom.
Sen. Obama needs help from grownups at this critical point in his campaign and career.
— S. Britchky Mar 7, 03:02 PM #
Power is so childish and this speaks volumes about the Obama campaign. If she had not been caught she would still be with Obama. I wonder what else she has said and gotten away with?
I wonder if she was the one who told the nation to the North not to worry about what Obama promised to do about NAFTA because it was just a campaign. It would not surprise me.
Power is a disgrace to Harvard and if she were not a woman they would send her on her way. Boy Mcain and the adults are beginning to look better and better to me.
— james oakley Mar 7, 03:44 PM #
It’s so unfortunate that our political climate has turned so negative that someone with Ms. Power’s obvious intelligence could get caught up in it.
What hope is there for Democrats and Republicans to solve our nation’s problems in a bipartisan way when members of the same party work so hard to destroy each other? Primaries have always been destructive, but this type of event damages my “hope” that the folks behind Obama were taking the high road.
— Ken Mar 7, 03:44 PM #
Power’s remark was certainly impolitic. But it was also quite understandable, in light of what was probably a very high degree of anger and frustration at the tactics of the Clinton campaign and their escalating negativism toward Senator Obama. The “red phone” ad and the gleeful response to the “NAFTA-Canada memo” —combined with the utterly ridiculous assertion that Sen.Clinton is skilled in responding to foreign policy crises—were clearly intended to wound Sen. Obama just ahead of the critical primaries. The Clintons are not unaccustomed to taking the low road. I just hope the Republicans won’t be laughing all the way to the White House. If tactics like these so cripple the Democrats that McCain is elected, the word “monster” will turn out to be quite well-deserved.
— Robert Donaldson Mar 7, 04:58 PM #
Uncharitable epithets are never helpful, but they are vigoroulsy eschewed by people who know better. One would hope that Samantha Power, with her academic background, would be one of those people. At Harvard’s public policy program, she is a role model for up and coming youth. Perhaps this incident will serve as a good learning experience. This may be the call to reinstate required civics courses across the nation.
— Sharon Gocke, PhD, JD Mar 7, 04:59 PM #
What Powers said was unfortunate, but does not in fact say anything at all about the Obama campaign. She shouldn’t have vented in front of the press— someone with her intellect should know better— but all the same, it’s sad to see such an obviously intelligent person leaving the campaign over something that’s ultimately rather trivial. Hopefully, once Obama has the nomination and the faux-outrage has died down, he’ll be able to bring her back to the campaign.
— Bradley Mar 7, 05:06 PM #
Boy, I just saw Power on television in England and is she ever a lightweight. She seemed in a daze and that was before she got caught. If this is the type of advisor Obama has he and maybe all of us will be in the deep dodo if he is elected.
These advisors are about five levels below those of JFK..and is she really at Harvard?
— james oakley Mar 7, 05:07 PM #
There are a couple of insidious forces at work here: (1) The 24/7/365 news cycle that has reporters crawling everywhere for a story or quote—hopefully salacious or controversial in order to rise above the pack; and (2) drive-by journalism that seeks to wound and kill everything in its sight, “just to show how powerful” it is. The fact that a second-tier advisor is giving interviews is pathetic enough; that anyone cares what she says is even more pathetic; that it is newsworthy is the apex of patheticism.
— marci Mar 7, 05:51 PM #
First, Obama sent a guy to tell Canada not to worry about NAFTA because he was jus playing politics..hmmm.
Second, I checked: Power is not a tenured professor or anywhere near it at Harvard.
Third, we need to vet all of Obama’s advisors.
— james oakley Mar 7, 05:54 PM #
Nor did the article above mention that Powers is a “tenured professor or anywhere near it”.
Poor James…
— MP Mar 7, 09:01 PM #
It should also be noted that nobody has been able to prove that “Obama sent a guy to tell Canada” any such thing.
— Bradley Mar 7, 10:10 PM #
As anyone who has read her work, heard her speak on Obama’s behalf, or interacted with her will realize, Power is no lightweight. In an appearance in Charleston a few months ago, Power repeatedly praised Clinton, though Power worked hard to make the case for her candidate. In the present case, Power made a statement she clearly regrets, and she has paid for it. Insulting Power’s character and her intelligence does nothing to elevate our civic discourse.
— Brian McGee Mar 7, 11:12 PM #
If Obama makes such poor choices in campaign advisers, why should we think his choices for positions in his administration would be any better? Strip away the empty rhetoric and the emperor has no clothes.
— TRB Mar 8, 08:47 AM #
It should also be noted that nobody has been able to prove that “Obama sent a guy to tell Canada” any such thing.
— Bradley
________________________
Really? The Canadians seem to think so!
— TRB Mar 8, 08:48 AM #
Well, I don’t know as Hillary Ramrod Clinton is a monster, as Power apparently suggested. Or said. She may not even be a monstress. But I suggest she does show signs of wanting to become Fuehrer. Or is that Fuehrerin? And her campaign shows signs of being run by understudies of Dr. Goebbels.
Heil Hillary!
— Joseph F Foster Mar 8, 03:02 PM #
Without wanting to defend McCain or Hilary, I note that Obama’s campaign is swimming in imposture & fraud. His biggest fraud is the claim to not be part of the Washington crowd, whereas he sent Zbig Brzezinski to Damascus to hold hands with Junior Assad who is considered by every informed person in the Middle East to have been behind the murder of Rafiq Hariri & about a dozen other anti-Syrian Lebanese politicians & journalists. Besides helping Hamas & Hizbullah shoot rockets at Israel in an effort to kill civilians. Now Zbig is a very old Washington hand, Jimmy Carter’s nat’l insecurity advisor. In that role Zbig helped Khomeini take over Iran & helped Syria take over most of Lebanon. Yet Obama pretends to be new, fresh, innocent. Indeed, He is a fresh, young mask on the old, ugly face of Zbig. Maybe Bradley should check out Zbig’s status in Obama’s campaign, not to mention that of several other State Dept veterans.
— Eliyahu Mar 8, 03:30 PM #
I am still appalled that Hillary Clinton can claim her assistance in her husband stint as the Governor of Arkansas as proof she can handle complex issues. I had the misfortune (due to a military obligation) to live in Arkansas 1989-1992 and I can tell you that the Clintons were not stellar state leaders. When I was there the state had the highest teenage pregnancy rate, ranked number 48 or so in education, 48 or so when it came to health funding and the list could go on and on. The only thing the state leaders including the Clintons at the time could say was “thank God for Mississippi.” Hillary is not an experienced leader.
— Liz Desnoyers-colas Mar 9, 12:12 AM #
Add to all of the salient comments of Eliyahu: the connection between Mr Obama and the Rev Wright and Mr Farrakhan, we can see that he is not only a light-weight but also dangerous. Hillary is neither experienced nor competent (just note the HealthCare system that she proposed in 1993 secrecy that would eat up 1/7 of our national economy). John McCain has numerous drawbacks but may well be the “least of all the evils.” Unfortunately, national poiltics has become such a nasty and vindictive process that we have gotten the most mediocre (or worse ) set of candidates in a generation (on second thought, considering the Bushes, Kerry, Gore, Carter, Nixon, Mondale, Dukakis, I guess that it has been more than a generation without many sterling candidates). It sure does give credence to the statement that our country is going the wrong way.
— Ole Perfesser Mar 10, 04:56 AM #