This is my first diary so please feel free to let me know if I have made any mistakes in format. Thank you.
I’m still smarting from Samantha Power’s resignation today. Smarting so much that I am motivated to write my first diary. There is something deeply unfair about a political campaign season in which a young woman who is almost universally praised as brilliant and whose resume frankly puts Hillary Clinton’s to shame loses her job over one stupid remark and Mark Penn, Howard Wolfson, Harold Ickes and the rest of the mediocre political hacks on the Clinton team are allowed to keep their jobs despite making stupid remarks and ad hominem attacks every day.
So I was thinking that there is something that those of us high-information voters in the progressive community can do to show our support for Ms. Power and improve our understanding of the world: Buy her books. Discuss her books. Let’s start a Samantha Power book club. http://www.amazon.com/...
I got the idea from reading Ben Smith’s blog today where, in an otherwise unnecessarily belittling put-down of Powers’ political surrogate’s skills, he notes that he is a fan of her books.
"This campaign was her first time acting as a surrogate for a candidate -- not a journalist and academic speaking her own mind -- and it doesn't seem to have been her calling. (Which doesn't mean you shouldn't go buy her books, of which I'm a fan.)"
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/
In Smith’s blog he also notes the Clinton supporters calling for Power’s head:
"On a conference call with reporters this morning, congressional supporters of Hillary Clinton demanded that Obama force adviser Samantha Power out of his camapign.
"We’re here today to ask Senator Obama to ask Samantha Power not to be part of his campaign," said Rep. Nita Lowey of New York, responding to the remark by Power -- a foreign policy adviser to Obama and expert on international human rights. "It’s really a test for Obama, a test of character," she said.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz of Florida called the comment and other Power remarks "a torrent of negative personal attacks."
And Rep. Greg Meeks of New York called Power's words "personal character assassination.""
http://www.politico.com/...
Smith also posted this fundraising email from the Clinton campaign using the Power’s gaffe to try to raise money:
"
Dear ,
Just one day after Senator Obama promised to begin attacking Hillary, a senior Obama advisor has called her a "monster."
That's right -- a "monster."
At the same time, Senator Obama's aides have begun rehashing the old negative attacks of the 90's against Hillary.
This is not the politics of hope -- it's the usual attack style politics that we have seen time and time again.
And it must stop.
Only you can make that happen. A small contribution now -- even as little as $5 -- will show the Obama campaign that there is a price to this kind of attack politics.
Make a contribution to stop the Obama attacks."
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/
I felt a queasy feeling in my stomach, similar to the way I felt when Hillary Clinton said that David Shuster’s apology for his "pimping out" remarks (doesn’t that feel like a century ago?) wasn’t enough and implying that he should be fired. That the Clinton camp was overreacting, even, dare I say it, piling on. Power screwed up and apologized. But they wanted blood. Why? At first I wondered whether it had to do with an older woman being resentful of a younger, brighter, more accomplished woman. I think there are movies made about this sort of thing.
Then I then found this great blog by Marc Cooper on Huffington Post entitled "Clinton, Genocide and a Campaign Gaffe." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Cooper starts out by noting that the
"Obama campaign is about to pay a very high price for the inopportune words of one of its most distinguished foreign policy advisors. The dazzlingly brilliant journalist, Pulitzer-prize winning author, and Harvard professor, Samantha Power, has been forced to resign from the campaign after she recklessly told a reporter that Hillary Clinton is a "monster.""
Cooper continues that "Power was rightfully awarded the Pulitzer for her finely written and downright horrifying book "A Problem From Hell" which, in macabre detail, describes the calculated indifference of the Clinton administration when 800,000 Rwandans were being systematically butchered. The red phone rang and rang and rang again. I don't know where Hillary was then. But her husband and his entire experienced foreign policy team - from the brass in the Pentagon to the congenitally feckless Secretary of State Warren Christopher - just let it ring. . . . And as more than one researcher has amply documented the case, the bloody paralysis of the Clinton administration in the face of the Rwandan genocide owed not at all to a lack of information, but rather to a lack of will. A reviewer of Power's book for The New York Times, perhaps summed it up best, saying that the picture of Clinton that emerges from this reading is that of an "amoral narcissist.""
Cooper writes:
"Therein resides the richest and saddest irony of all. Samantha Power has actually lived the sort of life that Hillary Clinton's campaign staff has, for public consumption, invented for its candidate. Though not quite 40 years old, Power has spent no time on any Wal-Mart boards but has rather dedicated her entire adult life rather tirelessly to championing humanitarian causes. She has spoken up when others were silent. She took great personal risks during the Balkan wars to witness and record and denounce the carnage (She reported that Bill Clinton intervened against the Serbs only when he felt he was losing personal credibility as a result of his inaction. "I'm getting creamed," Power quoted the then-President saying as he fretted over global consternation over his own hesitation to act)."
(emphasis added) Cooper concludes:
"We gave Power the Pulitzer for exposing the, well, monstrous indifference of the Clinton administration as it stared unblinkingly and immobile into the face of massive horror. But we give her a kick in the backside and throw her out the door when she has the temerity to publicly restate all that in one impolite word. Monstrous, indeed."
Wow. Doesn’t one have to wonder whether the Clinton campaign’s excessive overreaction to Samantha Power’s one unfortunate remark is a form of payback for exposing the "calculated indifference" and "amoral narcissism" of the Clinton administration?
In any event, I’m ordering "A Problem from Hell" tonight. I hope some of you will consider doing the same.