Obama’s Senior Foreign Policy Adviser Calls Clinton a ‘Monster’
06 March 2008 6:34 pm by Taylor Marsh
In the second time in two days, a senior foreign policy adviser, steps in it.
Yesterday it was Susan Rice who said Obama wasn’t ready to answer a 3:00 a.m.
phone call, asserting that Clinton wasn’t either. Now, according to The Scotsman,
Samantha Power has taken it one step further calling
Clinton a “monster.”
Ms Power told The Scotsman Mrs Clinton was stopping at nothing to try to
seize the lead from Mr Obama.“We f***** up in Ohio,” she admitted. “In Ohio, they are obsessed
and Hillary is going to town on it, because she knows Ohio’s the only place
they can win.“She is a monster, too – that is off the record – she is
stooping to anything,” Ms Power said, hastily trying to withdraw her
remark.
I’m just not feeling that different kind of politics vibe, are you?
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Expletives seem to be the order of the day. But Power isn’t some surrogate.
She’s a senior foreign policy adviser to Obama.
Lesson one in “off the record” comments, which Power should know
all too well. The person to whom you are speaking has to agree beforehand that
what’s being said is not for attribution. This would seem especially important
when talking to foreign press. You also don’t get to say something outrageously
inappropriate, then try to take it back by inserting it’s “off the record,”
simply because you screwed up and someone witnessed it.
Power is a Pulitzer Prize winner and teaches at Harvard University’s Kennedy
School of Government (TM NOTE: This has been edited from “graduated” to teaches).
Now, I have other problems with Obama’s foreign policy team, starting with
Anthony Lake. But along with Lake, Dr. Susan Rice is one of the people responsible for
the disastrous policy towards Rwanda in the 1990s, for which Bill Clinton deservedly
took so much heat and eventually apologized. As for Power, she obviously is simply unprofessional.
But I’ll let Larry Johnson get the last word. He calls them part of Obama’s
“not
ready for primetime” advisers. Are there no grown ups over at Camp Obama?
This is not the first time Obama’s team has screwed up on international relations
in the last week or so; adding Rice and Goolsbee, it’s a hat-trick. It’s getting
to be a habit with them.
UPDATE: Jake Tapper asks the question on everyone’s mind:
In December, Obama said he had “been very clear to my campaign. I do not want to see research that is involved in trying to tear people down personally. If I find out that somebody is doing that, they will be fired. And I have been absolutely crystal clear about this, and I have been clear about this for a very long time.” Would this count? Should Power be fired by the Obama standard?
