Good move
The departure of Samantha Power from the Obama campaign has kicked up a small dust bunny in the media. She’s been called naive for her remarks to the Scotsman and to the BBC. In a less media-saturated world no one would have ever heard about them. But we did.
It is a tribute to the Obama campaign (and to her, if she resigned willingly). They didn’t let it hang out there. They did not defend by minimizing or denying. And they are probably well rid of an advisor (unpaid according to the press) who is naive. Obama doesn’t need someone like her in an arena where he is weak. If campaigns, as many argue, are a clue as to how a president will function, then Obama gets a point for this.
Here is the NYT’s account.
The review of her book, The Problem from Hell, that I published in CWL (May 3, 2002), I can’t summon from the archive, but I more or less concluded there that she was naive. It would be good if she did not make here way into the State Department or NSC under a President Obama. (And probably Clinton won’t appoint her after this!)
I whole-heartedly disagree with your assessment of Samantha Power’s abilities and also disagree that she is näive. If Ms. Power is näive, we need more näivete in our national security apparatus. While I think her comments out-of-line, it also bears noting that the comment was made, at her request, off-the-record. So, at the end of the day, this is more about the ethics of the reporter for The Scotsman than about Prof. Power’s judgment. I think it also shows how shallow our politics are. Power is very criticial of the Clinton administration in ‘The Problem from Hell.’
Margaret: I am not qualified to speak to your evaluation of Ms. Power. However, I do think this news is very, very good (Hint: Obama says NO)
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/03/obamasays-novp.html
If what’s good for the goose is good for the goose, maybe Hillary should follow Ms. Power…
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/08/opinion/08herbert.html?hp
Why Obama would even consider the #2 spot (really #3 … Bubba you know) with Clinton is beyond me. He needs to keep his integrity intact and, if necessary, return to the Senate to help try to keep her honest (a major in and of itself).
I can’t see why either Clinton or Obama would take the number 2 spot for the other. If he’s the prez candidate, she should go be majority leader in the Senate. She’d be good. If she’s the prez candidate, I can’t see why he’d take number 2 unless they struck a deal about the kinds of responsibilities he’d have. But I can’t see that the Senate would be all that interesting for him either. See today’s NYTimes story on his Senate record…
UPDATE: Here’s the link to the Time’s story on Obama’s few years in the Senate:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/us/politics/09obama.html?hp
Okay, I took the time to investigate my own claim about Prof. Power’s remark being made off the record by reading, instead of glancing at, the Times Online article I was basing my assertion on. Here is the relevant section:
“Ms Power made the offending remark during a trip to London this week in which she was apparently too candid about the problems facing the Obama campaign.
“‘We f***** up in Ohio,” she told the newspaper. ‘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 added. The newspaper described her as ‘hastily trying to withdraw her remark’.
“Scotsman editor Mike Gilson tonight stepped in to defend his use of the ‘off-the-record’ quotes.
“He said: ‘We have no opinion on whether Ms Power was right to quit and perhaps politics should be able to retain people with talent who are prepared to learn by their mistakes but we are certain it was right to publish. I do not know of a case when anyone has been able to withdraw on the record quotes after they have been made.’”
Again, I do not agree with Ms. Power’s comment on Sen. Clinton, it was intemperate and, well, just stupid, as well as wrong. Nonetheless, whether it was on or off the record is immaterial to my earlier point, which echoes that of the editor of the Scotsman. I think an apology, which Prof. Power quickly offered, should be enough. She is a talented, smart, committed woman with a lot to contribute and a few things to learn. Power’s apology and resignation were delivered without any apparent coercion and without her making any excuses, not even invoking her feeble attempt to retract the statement.
I think candidates who seek to sell themselves and uniters and reconcilers, which both Democratic candidates certainly do, need to take opportunities to show us that they are. This could be done by publicly accepting the apology and forgiving the offender, instead of contributing to the trivialization of presidential politics and Obama, as one commenter suggested on the Talking Point Memo link given above, could refuse to accept her resignation while acknowledging the wrongness of her statemnt, thus upping the ante and the moral tone of the campaign. It goes without saying that Sen. Clinton is a tenacious campaigner and a candidate on the ropes, looking for any advantage.
If such a take makes me naïve, then I am content to remain so. I made second correction to my earlier remarks by placing the umlaut over the correct letter in naïve.
Scott, this “off the record” element is pretty fascinating. I find the Scotsman’s defense of its usage rather lame. But it’s great fodder for tomorrow’s class. Any other journos care to weigh on whether her remark was fair game?
David:
As for whether Samantha Power’s remark was fair game: you said you found the Scotsman’s defense for using the remark “rather lame.” Could you be more specific about why you found it to be lame?
I just did a bit of research on the internet, and found something which seems to support the position taken by the Scotsman. The following is from the “Ethics, Law and Good Practice” section of an NYU journalism handbook:
http://journalism.nyu.edu/ethics/handbook/human-sources/
That makes sense to me.
How do you see it?
Unhappy experience has taught me never to speak to a journalist on the record; I make it clear that whatever I have to say is off the record. If they want to use something, they can come back and read the quote. Many journalists don’t go for that. That’s fine. I feel no compulsion to air my views to journalists–other than the one I’m married to. And that’s always off the record.
Let me offer a piece of hearsay information: Friends went to hear Samantha Power at a public forum in New York. Talking about it the other night, one of them mentioned that Power lamented at the forum the difficulty of separating her own previously stated views on many subjects from that of Senator Obama’s campaign. Apparently she had to spend time and effort when campaigning distinguishing her sometimes outspoken positions from the candidate’s positions. Do we have here the difference between an intellecutal and a policy maker. Power, an intellecutal, has perhaps had (I don’t really know) little play in the policy world. In any case, it may be that she herself in apologizing and resigning recognized that she was unprepared for the trials of campaigning, i.e., representing the views of the candidate rather than her own.
Pace, Mr. Dodge, the Obama campaign and Power did the right thing, and did it expeditiously. That’s a plus for both. Power will probably better serve politics by throwing stones at the Establishment than by trying to shake it up from inside. You are certainly free to disagree with that whole-heartedly, even if you’re wrong in arguing that her “naivete about our national security apparatus” is a service to this campaign or would be a plus were she to serve on the national security council (she’d be eaten alive!).
One correction is in order and that is the context of my quote regarding Power’s “naivete about our national security apparatus.” In its original context I was disputing the accusation that she is naïve: “I whole-heartedly disagree with your assessment of Samantha Power’s abilities and also disagree that she is näive [sic]. If Ms. Power is näive [sic], we need more näivete [sic] in our national security apparatus” (emphasis added). Your quoting me makes it appear that I agree she is naïve and think it a virtue.
Try that again… I’m not sure I get your point.. I think she is naive and you don’t? You think naivete (sorry about the absent umlaut) is needed in our national security apparatus, and I don’t? Sorry still adjusting to EDT!
“I think she is naive and you don’t?” Exactly. Your previous post indicated that I thought she was actually naïve about our national security appartus- I do not believe she is.
I certainly believe that after the Bush Administration our national security appartus needs a paradigm shift. Foreign policy is increasingly one of the issues that separate Clinton from Obama. I think that this difference, to oversimplify more than a bit, is between realism and idealism. Samantha Power, who was Obama’s foreign policy guru, not merely a tangental advisor, who likely continue advising the Senator, but having no public role, is certainly a foreign policy idealist. I also agree that there is a downside to this way of looking at things, one that needs to be balanced by experience and realism, but not to the exculsion of fresh new voices. For such brilliant people with little or no policy experience, the only antidote is get some at the appropriate level, perhaps as a deputy national security advisor or some similar position.
For a non-German speaker, like myself, umlaut’s are an art and not a science. (alt+0239=umlaut over an i)
I am okay to agree to disagree on this. I appreciate being able to engage to back-and-forth and your willingness to do so. I have to admit to being more than a little amazed not to mention intimidated. So, thanks.
I meant to thank both you and David in this exchange. I admire you both greatly and think dotCommonweal exceptional for the willingness of you all to dialogue with us. For this and many other reasons I am happy, as mere lad of 42, to think of myself as “Commonweal Catholic.”
Be not intimidated!
“Foreign policy idealist” Exactly! That’s what I mean by her being naive! She is also moralistic! (not the same as moral, necessarily). In my view, that’s exactly what we do not need to replace the Bush Administration foreign policy (what can we call them) idiots? ideologues? Dare I say that Richard Holbrook, Madelein Albright, and/ or Zbigniew Brzezinski (the new improved one) would be better bets than Ms. Power.
Just to add a little heft to my hearsay above. This morning’s Chronicle of Higher Education reported the following (password required).
In her October interview with The Chronicle, Ms. Power said she sometimes must fight the urge to make unkind statements about other candidates.
“That’s just not Obama’s style,” she had said. “Left to my own devices, I’d articulate my frustrations in a much harsher way.”
She is obviously a person who is very committed to humanitarian activism. Her complaints (in the book for which she won a Pulitzer Prize) about the U.S. Rwanda policy transcend lack of military intervention, as she believes that the U.S. could have taken steps far short of intervention that might have mitigated the horror, and that it had no good reason not to do so. For that reason among others, the Clinton team hates her.
Nonetheless, I dislike her insistence that military intervention in humanitarian crises should be used more often. I am all for foreign policy that encourages humanitarian policies in foreign countries, but that is a long term strategy unlikely to be bolstered by omnipresent threats to back up our ideals with force.
Power’s slip of the tongue was stupid and unprofessional. First, it means that her very direct knowledge will not be available to correct Hillary’s dubious claims about her own constructive ideas for Rwanda intervention. Second, calling people names causes thinking people to discount the substance of what you say anyway.
“Dare I say that Richard Holbrook, Madelein Albright, and/ or Zbigniew Brzezinski (the new improved one) would be better bets than Ms. Power.”
Any of those three would be fine picks for SECSTATE. I think them all too senior to be National Security Advisor. I do not see Power as a SECSTATE or National Security Advisor pick. Maybe a deputy to the National Security Advisor or as a State Dept. Under Secretary for Democracy and Global Affairs, or perhaps even as Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance and USAID Administrator. In any case I still would like to see her as a key player in any Obama adminstration with a significant voice in shaping foreign policy.
Experience is the key to moving from moralism to being moral because ideas have to be translated into objectives and then into policy. Policies, in turn, become actionable and yield measureable results. This is the only way to do it. A few unfortunate comments in a heated campaign and a perhaps somewhat overly idealistic conception of what the U.S. can/ought to do in the world does not automatically disqualify a brilliant person, who is not yet even 40, from becoming an effective policy-maker.
Here is Nicolaus Mill’s in Dissent: complete dissent from the views I’ve expressed on Power. Enjoy!
http://dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=1101
Can I just write: “Yea, what he said”?