Power Outage

No sooner did the Clinton campaign demand Samantha Power�s resignation for calling Clinton a �monster� than she submitted it.

�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,� Power said in a statement. 

Power, a top foreign-policy adviser to Obama, originally told the Scotsman newspaper that Clinton �is a monster, too�that is off the record�she is stooping to anything.� Apparently she and the paper had different definitions of �off the record.� She later apologized, declaring her admiration for Hillary Clinton. But for the Clinton campaign, that wasn�t enough�a surrogate called the decision of whether to keep Power around �a test of character� for Obama. Presumably he has passed the test.

The resignation matters symbolically, but that�s about it. Power has called herself an �informal adviser� to Obama, and she wasn�t exactly part of the regular campaign entourage. (She did travel with the campaign in Iowa and South Carolina.) Her stepping down doesn�t mean she and Obama can�t talk. It just means they can�t appear together in public. Plus, keep in mind that Obama has already rolled out his major foreign-policy initiatives. Power could have been useful given Clinton�s latest attempts to bring Afghanistan front and center, but again, this is a resignation�not a restraining order.

Yet again we see how Obama�s talk about a �new kind of politics� opens him up to charges of �same old, same old.� Power�s words were nasty, sure, but hardly as offensive as Bill Shaheen and Bob Johnson�s winking hints about Obama�s cocaine use. Their charges had political weight, whereas Clinton was never, in fact, a giant, rampaging Cloverfield-style she-beast. But because Obama has sold himself as Mr. Clean, his opponents can point to any dirt as evidence of hypocrisy.

At the very least, Power�s transgression�coupled with Susan Rice�s recent slip-up and the Austan Goolsbee flap�will make the Obama campaign more careful about which surrogates they put out front.

Labels: Barack Obama, Samantha Power

Posted by Scott S | 0 comments