Obama Aide Resigns After Calling Hillary Clinton “A Monster”

The increasingly bitter and vitriolic tone of the Democratic Presidential nomination campaign featuring Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama has taken its latest foot-in-mouth victim:

A Barack Obama adviser resigned Friday after calling rival Hillary Rodham Clinton “a monster.”

Samantha Power, an unpaid foreign policy adviser and Harvard professor, announced her resignation in a statement provided by the Obama campaign in which she expressed “deep regret.”

“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,” she said. “And I extend my deepest apologies to Senator Clinton, Senator Obama and the remarkable team I have worked with over these long 14 months.”

The Obama campaign accepted the resignation immediately.

That means the Obama campaign wants to defuse the controversy immediately but it may have some other implications (see below). Clinton backers had been demanding Power’s resignation.

Power told The Scotsman that Clinton is a “monster” who will stoop to anything to win. She tried to make the remark off the record, but the Scottish newspaper printed it anyway. She apologized in a statement and the campaign decried the remark.

Actually, by the rules of journalism practiced by most journalists it doesn’t qualify as “off the record.” Off-the-record is usually agreed to before hand by the reporter. Saying something and regretting it and then saying “off the record” won’t cut it with some editors since there was no previous agreement.

Power is a foreign policy adviser to Obama and a Pulitzer Prize winner, was quoted in The Scotsman as saying Clinton was stooping to low tactics to recover ground in the race to win the party’s presidential nomination. The Harvard professor is also quoted as telling the newspaper Obama’s team had been disappointed with Clinton’s campaign win in Ohio on Tuesday.

“In Ohio, they are obsessed and Hillary is going to town on it, because she knows Ohio’s the only place they can win,” Power is quoted as saying. “She is a monster, too — that is off the record — she is stooping to anything.”

….Obama’s spokesman Bill Burton said in an e-mail: “Senator Obama decries such characterizations which have no place in this campaign.”

Obama’s campaign had to act swiftly. For one thing, Power’s comments if she remained would have sparked a controversy that would dominate the news cycle and create great sympathy for Clinton. And, as David Brooks notes in his column, Obama’s campaign has been based on the premise that he’s offering a different kind of politics that focuses on issues and not vitriol.

The phrase most often used now is “knife fight” — the theory that the Clinton campaign benefits when they can draw Obama into reacting like just any politician using the usual tools of demonization or verbal overreach.

This time his aide used both.

One of Obama’s several dilemmas is how to run and maintain an issue-oriented campaign when brickbats are being hurled at you. Do you throw back or get bloodied and hope people consider you noble and principled?

Power’s comments underscore the fact again: it is getting very very ugly, divisive and emotional out there for supporters of Clinton and Obama. Power now joins the list of people — some from the Clinton camp — who made outrageous statements about the other side and had to quit. And the list of factors that suggest that party unity may not be easy for the Democrats this year, no matter who ends up on top.