Anyone who has been as deeply involved in this campaign as we here on OMS knows the feelings that pushed Samantha Power to call Hillary Clinton a monster. After all, even Tina Fay, who is unabashedly pro-Hillary, used much stronger language on Saturday Night Live to describe the former First Lady.
One of the main reasons I have been very happy to serve -- and I have done so with the strongest of commitments -- as a volunteer supporter of the Obama campaign was because it reserved for me the freedom of expression that is just not possible for those who have formal roles as staff or advisors. And having worked for the Bill Clinton Administration and some of its appointees, rest assured, I have strong feelings about the Clintons that are often difficult to contain. But if you're a senior policy advisor to the candidate, you have no choice but to keep such feelings out of the public domain.
So, it's too bad. Samantha Power's angry outburst reported by a foreign journalist has lead to her resignation from the campaign. Just in case it is not yet clear to her, this means that her role in an Obama Administration will probably be limited at least initially to a position that does not require Senate confirmation. There are lots of those at the NSC and State Department for a brilliant policy professional like Ms. Power, especially with her background on the crises in Darfur and the Balkans. In fact, she would find a precedent and suitable match in Bill Clinton's appointment of Sam Brown to head our delegation to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which has had a major institutional role in Kosovo, Chechnya, and as far away as Central Asia.
Brown's radical past and prior record at ACTION made it impossible to get Jesse Helms' approval for an ambassadorial appointment. So Brown served a full tour as the Head of Delegation, without the rank of ambassador, to the US Mission to the OSCE in Vienna. Intent on leaving government service with the title of Ambassador, however, Brown reached out to his former secretary Betty Curry, Bill Clinton's personal secretary in the White House (who had an interesting role herself in the Monica Lewinsky scandal), for help. She made sure that the President gave Brown an "interim" appointment, a temporary measure permitted under law while the Congress is in recess, that gave Sam Brown the title, but not rank, of Ambassador.
So Samantha Power, while things may look bleak today, you are now free to speak out, and still look forward to a fruitful role and position in the Obama Administration.
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