Samantha Power. Power in Manhattan in January 2003. (Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times)
UPDATE: Samantha Power announced her resignation from the Obama presidential campaign today. Read about it here.
by Rick Pearson
JACKSON, Miss.—Sen. Barack Obama suffered another foreign policy snafu with one of his advisers, who told a newspaper that his rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, was a “monster” who is “stooping to anything” to try to win the Democratic presidential nomination.
Samantha Power, who is advising the Obama campaign, made the comments to the Scotsman newspaper of Scotland. Power later apologized and Obama said there was no place in his campaign for such descriptions of his opponent.
In an interview, Power described Clinton by saying, “She is a monster, too – that is off the record – she is stooping to anything.” Though Power had tried to withdraw the remark, it occurred during an on-the-record interview.
“You just look at her and think: ergh. But if you are poor and she is telling you some story about how Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it will be more effective. The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive.”
In a statement released by Obama’s campaign, Power said: These comments do not reflect my feelings about Sen. Clinton, whose leadership and public service I have long admired.”
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Power said she deeply regretted her remarks.
“It is wrong for anyone to pursue this campaign in such negative and personal terms,” she said. “I apologize to Senator Clinton and to Senator Obama, who has made very clear that these kinds of expressions should have no place in American politics.”Obama’s campaign also issued a statement from Bill Burton’s the campaign’s spokesman, who said: “Sen. Obama decries such characterizations which have no place in this campaign.”
Just prior to last Tuesday’s primaries in Ohio and Texas, Obama initially denied a report that one of his top economic advisers had met with Canadian officials to assure them that Obama’s rhetoric on changing or opting out of the North American Free Trade Agreement were statements made for political consumption.
The controversy occurred as Clinton traveled to Mississippi to begin a two-day campaign swing in advance of the state’s Tuesday primary. At a fundraising event in Canton, Clinton turned up the heat a notch.
Going as far back as the Iowa campaign, Clinton has usually said she would become part of history with the election. Noting that Mississippi has never elected a woman to statewide office, she said there was “one way we could make a real statement here in Mississippi and that is for Mississippi to vote for a woman for president,” Clinton said.