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Samantha Power and the Poison Pen

(Samantha Power is a friend, so factor that in as your read.)

How weird is it that Peggy Noonan, of all people, argued for Samantha Power not to lose her job with the Obama campaign after she let the truth slip out? Ok, after she bellowed to the skies her anger and frustration at Senator Clinton. I'm all paranoid now, what with the Limbaugh-ites giggling about voting for Hillary so they won't have to face Barack in November, but the piece rings true. I think she actually means it.

Noonan's argument is:

A) Campaign staff are human. They're exhausted. Of course they end up loathing the competition. On the rare occasions when all of those three collide, cut them a break.

B) For all her mega-accomplishments, Power is a political newbie and (unbeknownst to Noonan) perhaps the most honest, and earnest, person on the planet. So again, with the break.

C) (And the most interesting point) Journalists should not swarm her because we're always complaining that political operators speak only in well-rehearsed soundbites of nothingness. When someone goes off script for once, we chop them off at the knees.

Sounds good, but ... according to The Scotsman, Power knew she was on the record. I tell my students everyday that you can't let folks go off the record after they've said something, so Noonan should be more specific; exactly which officials do we cut a break, and in what circumstances? As David Corn points out, Capitol Hill types regularly call the opposition everything but a child of God in his presence. They just make sure to do it off the record and he doesn't print it even though it would make him more famous.

D) Noonan suggested that Clinton take this opportunity to sheath the claws she's been sharpening on Obama's back for so long and not make Power the poster-girl for his ineptitude and cunning. Unfortunately, her campaign did just that and Power resigned just minutes after Noonan finished filing. Not that it would have made any difference.

The gotcha! is all that matters these days. There's little difference between outing Power during a weak moment in one of a hundred book interviews she's been giving, and publishing a photo of her with the back of her dress caught in her underwear. There have been many times in my career when I didn't report something bone stupid a subject had said or done while on the record, not if all that was to be gained was a little notoriety for me. They were the right calls. I don't regret any of them and I plan to end my career without ever having the opposite regret. Sometimes journalists need to be ruthless assholes. Only the reporter from The Scotsman who got this scoop knows if this was one of those times.

Comments

"Samantha Power is a friend"

You are truly blessed to have such a great mind as a friend.

The rest is just sad, HRC should have accepted an apology and moved on (IMO)

Posted by: capt - Hussein on 03/10/08 at 1:28 PM Respond

Good critieria, what is the truth, what&who gains, at what expense. I heard a caller on a talk show say "how thick is this politicians skin? Is this the person claiming media bias against her? What is a "monster" if not to scare? A monsters job is to cause FEAR. 3am ad comes to mind. What's the problem?"

Posted by: Don on 03/10/08 at 3:07 PM Respond

I read Howard French's "A Continent for the Taking" and Lynne Duke's "Mandela, Mobutu, and Me" when they were finalists for the Hurston Wright Award. Both authors were bureau chiefs in Africa for major newspapers (the NY Times and the Washington Post) and both were reporters on the ground at the time of the Rwandan massacres. Was Ms. Powers?

Posted by: Mike on 03/10/08 at 7:26 PM Respond

Is this the person claiming media bias against her? What is a "monster" if not to scare? A monsters job is to cause FEAR. 3am ad comes to mind. What's the problem?"

Posted by: youtube on 03/11/08 at 11:06 AM Respond

This is what Hillary Clinton said during her speech in Pennsylvania. She "para" phrased, I would say mis characterized, the remarks made by former Obama adviser Samantha Powers:

"My opponent has said he will have them all out in 16 months, and then one of his top foreign policy advisers tells the foreign press ‘well, don’t pay any attention to that, that’s just talk during a campaign.’ ”

As you read the transcript of the Power interview with Stephen Sackur you realize that she said something very different from that, and she didn't claim that Obama's policy would be different, just that he would base the levels of withdrawals on events he may learn about after taking office, and she also said she was convinced he wanted to remove troops within the 16 months.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/03/are-obama-and-c.html

Actually, what Power said seems a lot like what another Obama adviser said in April 15, 2007 according to Jason Horowitz in the New York Observer. “We are not dictating troop levels; we are dictating the overall goal." --And: “All the deadlines are flexible if they reach benchmarks,” he added. “The goals are achievable.

Obama started out with benchmarks including one that would require a change in US policy toward Baathists. That change was in fact made by Gates and Bush/Cheney. -- Guess even they thought it was a good idea.

Posted by: Dori Smith on 03/11/08 at 6:41 PM Respond

I really do not understand why a journalist feels that they have a right to write about a friend?
There's no objectivity there but with all the hatred and scorn tossed at Hillary by this magazine, objectivity doesn't exist. It appears journlism doesn't. Your friend has a big mouth. She criticized Gordon Brown while she was in England as well. I guess that's okay for the campaign's foreign adviser as well?

Posted by: Maria on 03/11/08 at 7:51 PM Respond

I first noticed Samantha Power about 10 years ago when she was yet unknown. I remembered her name from that first, brief cable TV news commentary. But when I met her last summer, I did not let her know that I had been a secret admirer and I just said:
“You’re that TV news African affairs spokesperson?” That didn’t go over well. Which is part of my point indeed. She started out as a fearless fighter for the marginalized sub-cultures and ended up, one of the fallen “beautiful people”.
We did not see her involvement in publicizing the genocides of (predominantly Christian) Southern Sudan. However, no sooner as the killing moved north into the Muslim zones of Darfour, out came the celebrities and there too was Ms. Power.
Her first mistake was trying to take back something which was according to her true feelings, and probably accurate. Her second mistake was to issue a well composed apology, probably knowing that she was outski anyway.
Grandmother say:
‘If you’ve dug yourself into a hole so deep you can’t climb out, first order of business is to stop digging.’
She’ll be back, if not in 08 then in 12. Lets hope she looses the movie-star bug.
Grandmother also say:
‘A mind is a terrible thing to chaste’.

Posted by: Trollstein on 03/12/08 at 5:59 PM Respond