Unnecessary Power Outage – UPDATED

Okay, now we have several days of the Samantha Power NON SCANDAL.

For those of you who have somehow missed this news story that, frankly, at MOST should have been a minor blip in the news cycle, here’s the deal:

Samantha Power is a respected journalist, Harvard professor, and an author with a Pulitzer under her belt (among other awards) for her excellent book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. Power is also wicked smart, impassioned, accomplished, and quite courageous in her willingness to tromp around the world’s danger zones to report what needs reporting. And she’s something of a babe, in that smart grrlll, Marion-the-Librarian kind of way.

Her book on genocide was very highly regarded and, when I met her briefly a couple of years ago at one of those LA Times awards parties, she came across as sparklingly intelligent, compassionate,and very authentic..

Fast forward to the present: For the past few weeks, she’s been on a gazillion city book tour promoting her new book about Sergio de Mello, the UN envoy killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq in 2003. (Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World.) In addition, she is a highly-ranked foreign policy adviser for the Obama campaign. (She’s been involved—either on or off his staff—since 2005.) In short, with the combined demands of a book tour and the campaign, she was likely running on little sleep and much stress. But, hey, whatever.

On the day in question, she had just landed in the UK for more book events, and was in her hotel room doing an interview with the paper, the Scotsman, when she had to take a phone call from another Obama campaign insider. At the time, tensions were high as Obama had just lost Ohio The call had to do with the whole Canada/NAFTA kerfuffle…..and the Ohio defeat. According to the Scotsman, Power got off the phone visibly frustrated by the call

…..clearly rattled by the Ohio defeat, Ms Power told The Scotsman Mrs Clinton was stopping at nothing to try to seize the lead from her candidate.

“We f***** up in Ohio,” she admitted. “In Ohio, they are obsessed [about jobs] 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.

The Scotsman reporter decided that the remark was indeed on the record, the Clinton people jumped on the Scotsman story and were soon telling reporters how ….shocked, shocked….they were that Obama’s Ms. Power would say such a, well, monstrous thing.

The next day Power’s moment of blurting was the lead story on Good Morning America, and quickly became an international news story. Within hours, the bright capable Power had apologized multiple times for saying something no different than what is going on behind closed doors in both campaigns, and then she resigned.

(Nevermind that shortly before Monstergate, top Clinton strategist Howard Wolfson had compared Obama to the Clinton’s bete noir monster, Kenneth Starr without so much as a raised eyebrow from the press.)

This is exactly the kind of campaign game the Clintons play so well, and why many of us who admire them for their better qualities, are coming, in the course of this presidential election season, to actively dislike them.

David Corn has pegged the issue exactly right:

…

….She did apologize. But the Clintonites, ever on the lookout for an issue (or non-issue) to hype, quickly called on Obama to fire Power.

Non-News Flash: Aides to presidential candidates routinely refer to the competition in harsh terms, particularly when they talk to reporters off the record. More than once, a top Clinton person has told me that s/he believes Obama is a self-righteous fraud–or worse. It was, of course, always off the record. But if I had reported any of these remarks, I could have gotten the pop The Scotsman has received for disclosing Power’s comment.

The Clinton people do deserve chutzpah points for trying to turn this nothing-burger into a full-course feast. During a conference call with reporters yesterday, Clinton’s top spinner, Howard Wolfson, compared Obama and his aides to Kenneth Starr because they dared to question Clinton’s refusal to release her income taxes. (In The Washington Post, Dana Milbank credited me with asking the question that prompted the Ken Starr remark –a quip obviously locked and loaded before the call.) The comparison was ridiculous. But in Democratic circles, there’s not much of a bigger slur than, Hey, you’re Ken Starr! For Democrats, Starr is the functional equivalent of a monster.

So the Clinton crowd does not have the moral high ground in this round. Yet what was the net result? Power, a talented journalist and thinker who gives a damn about genocides (certainly more so than Bill Clinton did during the Rwanda nightmare), was forced off Obama’s campaign. On Friday morning, she released a statement:

With deep regret, I am resigning from my role as an adviser [to] the Obama campaign effective today. Last Monday, I made inexcusable remarks that are at marked variance from my oft-stated admiration for Senator Clinton and from the spirit, tenor, and purpose of the Obama campaign. And I extend my deepest apologies to Senator Clinton, Senator Obama, and the remarkable team I have worked with over these long 14 months.

Well, at least she had the heart to apologize and admit she had gone too far in denigrating the opposition. You won’t see such sentiments at Clinton HQ.

And we wonder why the young tend to be cynical about politics.

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UPDATE: For those who haven’t already found it, pal and blogfather, Marc Cooper, has an excellent and informative take on the Power situation.