Samantha Power was, some time ago, it seems, one of this blogger’s favorite candidates to be what she has become: UN Ambassador replacing Susan Rice. What I’ve always liked about Ms. Power, from a distance, is a keen mix of fearless observation, rapier intellect, and incredible good looks. I’d also, long ago, wrote that she should be a part of the Obama campaign, and then, to my surprise, she was.
Ok, let’s get this out of the way. I’m a big fan of any women who sends a message, without trying, that a woman can be intelligent and hot. Given the need to get over it, I’m not interested in any muting of my observation. I merely enjoy saying what everyone else is thinking, and pissing off others in the process. But back to Samantha Power.
Rather than look at Ms. Power’s many lofty credentials – Founding Executive Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, Senior Adviser To The Obama Campaign, and author of a number of books on foreign policy – the media, or some, chose to focus on her comment in 2007, calling then-Senator and Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton “a monster.”
To understand Ms. Power’s feelings, one has to be what I and she were: totally committed to getting Barack Obama into The White House. Though we never met, we were part of a true, inspired, hard-working network of people who canvased the nation, worked online, licked envelopes, and did everything we could, and then some, so that our candidate could win.
Hillary Clinton was standing, formidably, in the way, and it seemed willing to use every trick in the book to win, even veiled racism. It was Hillary Clinton’s willingness to allow Barack Obama to be painted as the uppity, aggressive, black guy that rankled me and it came out in blog post by David Corn, now of Mother Jones, that I talked about in this video, here Dec 5, 2007:
So when Samantha Power says that Hillary Clinton was a “monster” she was, to me, totally correct.
But then Hillary Clinton said something that proved, indeed, that Ms. Power was correct.
On 23rd of May, 2008, Hillary Clinton called forth the idea that Barack Obama could be assassinated, saying “We all remember in June, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in California.” That set off alarm bells. The comment took just 47 minutes to go viral. But then, given the chance to really clean up the problem, Clinton actually blamed Obama for her comment, after apologizing for her comments.
At the time, Samantha Power was totally correct. I did not want to see her step down then, but thankfully, President Obama made up for that, and put her in The White House.
Of course, Hillary Clinton is no longer Secretary of State.
Stay tuned.