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Audio: BBC speaks w/TMV blogger re: impact of Samantha Power incident

March 7th, 2008
By JILL MILLER ZIMON

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Listen here if you’re interested in knowing what the BBC wanted to know about how I feel and how I feel about the Samantha Power incident.

From a clinical perspective, the fact that Ms. Power was unable to filter out intense negative comments about Hillary Clinton and her campaign during an on-the-record interview while on a book tour indicates that Ms. Power may be the one who is obsessed with Ohio, rather than, as she says, Ohio being obsessed (about what, we’re not quite sure but some believe Ms. Power meant that Ohio is obsessed with Hillary Clinton).

But the fact remains: as much as we malign strategists, advisers and consultants, those individuals have to be obsessed, at some level, with their candidate and winning and campaigning. Isn’t that a requirement? Sure - the money is a factor. But at the level where Ms. Power served, it’s about passion, maybe power but less likely money - at least at this campaigning stage.

And if the Obama campaign has been about anything, it’s been about getting obsessed with his message. They didn’t call one of his campaign ads “Join” for nothing.



This entry was posted on Friday, March 7th, 2008 at 8:02 pm and is filed under Newsweek Blogitics, Primaries, Ohio, BBC, Barack Obama, 2008 Elections, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 15 Comments

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    Joe,

    How are you?

    Are you saying that "passion" excuses Power's emotional, personal attack against Hillary (as opposed to attacks against Hillary over issues)?
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    I meant "Jill.," Good interview, btw.
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    I personally am not much of an Obama fan but I actually find her outburst refreshing. I mean after all about 300,000,000 Americans have called Hillary just about every name in the book. Have impugned her integrity. Have beat, bashed and otherwise sullied her name in every way shape and form fashionable.

    Now along comes one of Obama's top aides who lets a brief glimpse into what I am sure is the prevailing inside opinion about Hillary by the Obama camp and she is fired. Or forced to resign?

    Thats preposterous and for that matter what this smacks of is setting a prescedent that is going to be extremely hard to manage once he has 10,000 employees under his watch. They will by this example either be getting fired left and right for short emotion outbursts which every freakin politician in the history of man is prone to do from time to time.

    Or they will be paralyzed with fear and incapable of action for fear of doing or saying something which might not pass his Highnesses muster. I rather suspect both.

    Its a shame that Barak Obama has no loyalty. I hope all his advisors, cabinet secretaries and staff keep their resumes up to date because I don't think they will have their jobs long.
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    I agree with Ms. Power's characterization of the ogress roguette Hillary Clinton. She is an amoral, hypocritical, win-at-all-costs specimen of everything wrong with Democrat politics----Obama was/is a refreshing change.

    Sadly, Samantha may not be ready for prime time. She has the Irish temperament and has obviously kissed the Blarney Stone, but she needs to curb her tongue. As one observer noticed, she was caught between a scholar's need to tell the truth, the author's need to sell her book, and a political advisor's requirement to keep her counsel to herself and her candidate.

    I worked on two national Democrat campaigns and worked under Harold Ickes [and John Podesta worked for me]. The need not to hurt your candidate is the prime uppermost consideration whenever you are in a public forum of any kind.

    Zbig Brzezinski doesn't think she should have resigned, been fired, whatever. I do. She is unseasoned and too naive to be the chief foreign policy advisor to a presidential candidate. My last campaign for the Dems, I worked for Madeleine Albright [in '84 for Mondale]. I brought my then-close buddy Christopher Hitchens to the National HQ & the cabal around Albright shuddered at his eloquence & promptly shut him out of any public forums. They were perhaps too conservative & tight-lipped.

    However, Samantha Power's time will come. But she is simply too glib, trusting, and unseasoned for the top level. Change & new faces don't always work, especially when you're trying to slay a "MONSTER."
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    Hi Cupples - no, I didn't mean it excuses it. It was my way of nicely saying, everyone should be so lucky to have a candidate about whom they CAN get worked up (which is another way of saying, I wish I was so worked up over someone instead of despondent that the current choices don't enthuse me at all, except relative to Bush).

    That was all. Thanks for asking.
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    Well, now, let's look at this for a minute -

    There are only 300+million Americans - at least some number between 40-50% probably have never called her such names so I think you overstate.

    But that 50% or more HAVE is not such a great thing either - and I agree that a hefty statistically significant number of Americans have called Clinton names. No argument there.

    But that doesn't make it okay for the top advisor to any politician to talk about another politician - or person for that matter - that way. In any setting. And it's the behavior of a person in a certain position that makes this an issue.

    Were you also upset when John Edwards let the two bloggers who weren't even blogging for him go? To be consistent with what you are writing here, you will have to say yes, no?

    The loyalty is to the election of the candidate Power supports. I am 100% certain that she understands that she cannot exercise that level of candor if she expects her candidate to win - it just isn't helpful to him, or to her, frankly.

    And again, just to emphasize - the content isn't so much at issue as, here is a representative of the Obama campaign, who wasn't even being interviewed in her role as such, and she is saying these things about another candidate - doesn't even matter which candidate.

    That's just not a good scenario. Try and swap out names with other candidates or other people in high positions and those around them. As a society, it's just not typically acceptable to speak as she did.

    Should it be? That's another question - and we could talk about that too if you want.

    Last example: I was the director of a newly formed department at a large mental health agency. My responsibilities involved dismantling another department and rebuilding it with the help of people from across the agency. One the person who had been in charge of the department for about 12 years was miserable with the changes (most of which reflected needs to operate in a managed care environment - this was the mid-90s).

    Now, this person was at a meeting with our agency's largest customer so to speak and she spoke very negatively about me in front of a group of several people with whom I dealt regularly (none of whom felt the same way). One of the people in the meeting called me up afterwards to say, you will not believe what so and so went on about you! I was about to leave on vacation, I passed the info on to my boss, who was the exec dir and when I returned from vacation, this woman - who by the way I had a very close relationship with and had never had a problem with in the office and knew her personally - had resigned.

    The exec dir had called her into his office. Told her what he was told by someone who was at the same meeting, asked her if it was true and she said, I resign. She never responded as to whether it was true.

    You can't just go around and diss people - on your side or on the other side.

    But, honestly? To me, Power fascinates me from a mental health perspective. Her invective is FIERCE. THAT is scary to me - she's got some seriously pent-up feelings about Clinton.

    Anyway - thanks for commenting.
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    Dave, thanks for commenting. You make good points with which I agree. The only one I might take issue with is the scholar's need to tell the truth - there is truth and there is truth - does it really involve speaking the way Power spoke? I don't know. Maybe - but maybe not.

    Thanks again. Very interesting.
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    The thing is, "monster" is hardly anything terrible, horrible, malevolent, et cetera.

    Libel and slander, away you should go. Being too rude or vicious (that's the key), away you should probably go. (I don't like it but others may say, judge with respect to other contests, here and in other countries like the UK.) But "monster"?
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    So the question then becomes this.

    If one of Barak Obama's supporters says something untoward they should resign. This seems to be the prevailing position of a new kind of politician who is demanding a new kind of approach to government. I do not disagree with him on this but the problem is that even his own supporters want to eat their own for transgressing.

    The end result will be carnage and paralysis for the fear of making a mistake.

    So to further this line of reasoning then if one is to hold your staff and those around you so firmly accountable then:

    Does that go for Barak Obama as well? I mean during the course of the next 4 or 8 years if Obama loses it and calls one of his political opponents a name does that mean he should resign?
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