Power-Less

You may think that Samantha Power, a foreign policy aide on Illinois senator Obama's White House campaign, resigned because she called Hillary Clinton a "monster." Not exactly, according to the March 17th Weekly Standard, which recounts the rest of the story:

On Monday, March 3, Power appeared on BBC radio and said that Obama, whom she had been advising, might be interested in doing some population relocation in Iraq. She said that such a course of action would be regrettable, but might be necessary, admitting that "moving potentially people from mixed neighborhoods to homogenous neighborhoods [is] tragic. . . It's the equivalent of facilitating ethnic cleansing, which is terrible."

A week that began with her equating one of her candidate's mullings with ethnic cleansing only deteriorated from there. That same day, she sat for an interview with the New Statesman, telling the left-wing weekly that Obama was like Vieira de Mello in his "willingness to talk to dictators" (the magazine's phrase). Of the latter, she admitted, "In his relationship with evil, he almost got a little seduced."

On Thursday, Power appeared on the BBC TV show Hardtalk, where she tried to explain that Obama's commitment to withdrawing all combat troops from Iraq in 16 months is really just a "best-case scenario" (her words). Agog, the host asked, "So what the American public thinks is a commitment to get combat forces out in 16 months isn't a commitment?"

Power, who perhaps hadn't yet read the New Statesman's write-up of her interview ("Dissembling does not come at all easily to her, and if she is to be part of an Obama White House she will have to learn to deliver the odd fib more persuasively") responded: "You can't make a commitment in March 2008 about what circumstances will be like in January of 2009. He will, of course, not rely on some plan that he's crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. Senator. He will rely upon a plan--an operational plan--that he pulls together in consultation with people who are on the ground to whom he doesn't have daily access now, as a result of not being the president." . . .

By that point the karmic snowball was rolling so fast, there was no stopping it. Soon, Power was taking cheap shots at Condoleezza Rice ("I'm nothing like her. I don't have any conventional political ambition") and insulting the British prime minister, telling the Telegraph, "I am confused by what's happened to Gordon Brown. I thought he was impressive." So much for a new spirit of cooperation with allies.

Thank God Power's gone--who else might be working for Obama (or for Hillary for that matter) with identical attitudes albeit able to hold their tongue?