(Crossposted from The Field.)
This is encouraging news:
Samantha Power, the Harvard University professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author who earned notoriety for calling Hillary Rodham Clinton a "monster" while working to elect Barack Obama president, will take a senior foreign policy job at the White House, The Associated Press has learned.
Continued at the jump...
Officials familiar with the decision say Obama has tapped Power to be senior director for multilateral affairs at the National Security Council, a job that will require close contact and potential travel with Clinton, who is now secretary of state. NSC staffers often accompany the secretary of state on foreign trips.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because Power's position, as well as that of other senior NSC positions, have not yet been announced. One official said the announcements would be made in the near future.
Power, 38, will be the conscience of White House foreign policy for human rights and against genocide, causes that she has championed widely. Her resume and policy heft outrun those of most foreign policy wonks thirty years her senior.
The NSC is located inside the White House, which means she'll be there, day in, day out, to sound the alarm if perchance (cough, cough) other agencies somehow overlook urgent human rights matters going on around the world.
Power is one of those rare policy wonks that, beyond having mastery of her subject matter, comes with the persuasive communications skills to make people listen to what she says. In the administration, where it's no secret that she has the President's respect and ear, she brings the doctrine of human rights - which has wandered in the wilderness for 28 years, locked out during the administrations of Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush II - with her, back from exile.