Obama aide and Pulitzer Prize winner Samantha Power has resigned for calling Hillary Clinton "a monster" -- in what was specified as off-the-record comments to a reporter for "The Scotsman."
As TPM says,
"There are advisers and then there are advisers. Power is Barack Obama's Condi Rice: his leading foreign policy guru and someone who's been close to him for some time."
On RTE radio, Power explained what prompted her to make the unfortunate remarks:
MONSTER?
She tried to explain that she was speaking in the context of defending her longtime friend and campaign colleage Austan Goolsbee, the University of Chicago economist and Obama adviser who, she said, was “dragged in the mud” when Canadian diplomats said he had told them Obama’s recent turn to the left on the NAFTA trade agreement was “political positioning” for Ohio voters. The subsequent controversy and poor PR handling by the Obama campaign was a contributing factor to the loss to Clinton on Tuesday.
Goolsbee, she said, never made the remarks attributed to him and the Clinton campaign had “run with” the story.
Since the Tuesday primary losses, it emerged that senior officials in the normally leak-free Canadian government had heard much the same kind of “take this with a grain of salt” noises from the Clinton campaign. And there have been suggestions that the centre-right government in Ottawa was trying to tilt the election against Obama.
Weirdly, the deputy leader of Canada’s Liberal party is Michael Ignatieff, who apparently was Samantha Power’s “soulmate” at Harvard.
David Corn of Mother Jonescries hypocracy!
Non-News Flash: Aides to presidential candidates routinely refer to the competition in harsh terms, particularly when they talk to reporters off the record. More than once, a top Clinton person has told me that s/he believes Obama is a self-righteous fraud--or worse. It was, of course, always off the record. But if I had reported any of these remarks, I could have gotten the pop The Scotsman has received for disclosing Power's comment.
. . .The Clinton people do deserve chutzpah points for trying to turn this nothing-burger into a full-course feast. . . in Democratic circles, there's not much of a bigger slur than, Hey, you're Ken Starr! For Democrats, Starr is the functional equivalent of a monster.
TMP also notes that,
Obama is losing a key adviser and very visible advocate on foreign policy at a time when national security is front and center in the Dem primary -- an outcome that helps explain why the Hillary camp pushed so hard for her ouster.
ACTING LIKE A MONSTER?
Since Power's comments on Monday, I think Clinton has been acting more and more like someone who would rather destroy the Democratic Party than see Obama win. Of course, she isn't actually a monster!! She's just portraying Obama as a Monster: a secret Muslim (and therefore part of a secret plot!), NAFTA supporter (threat to your job!!), Incapable Comander in Chief (threat to your life!!) --all of which are designed to make voters vote with their fear. And of course there's the desire to seat the Florida and Michigan delegates, a breaking of the rule of law and her own agreement that can only result in making all banana republic elections or dictatorial regimes seem democratic. Monster? Monster?