Samantha Powers Redux

Clinton “is a monster, too. She is stooping to anything. . . . The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive.” Samantha Powers on Senator Clinton

She’s back. According to the Washington Post:

Samantha Power, the Harvard professor who was forced to resign from Barack Obama’s presidential campaign last spring after calling Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton “a monster,” is now advising the president-elect on transition matters relating to the State Department — which Clinton is slated to head.

Power is listed on Obama’s transition Web site as part of the team reviewing national security agencies. Her duties, according to the site, will be to “ensure that senior appointees have the information necessary to complete the confirmation process, lead their departments, and begin implementing signature policy initiatives immediately after they are sworn in.”

In short, she is part of a team that is likely to work directly with Clinton, a potentially awkward situation for the two women. Obama is expected to officially announce Clinton as his choice for secretary of state after the Thanksgiving holiday.

Transition officials declined to comment. A spokesman for Clinton did not respond to an e-mail sent yesterday evening. Power has been on the list of review team officials since mid-November; the Associated Press first called attention to her presence on the list yesterday.

But people close to the transition suggested too much was made of Power’s comment at the time, and said that she has made moves to bury the hatchet with Clinton and that the senator accepted those efforts.

If so, that could pave the way for Power to reemerge as a key adviser for the new president after being barred for months from appearing on television as a foreign policy surrogate for Obama.

It was a campaign. Things were said. I said my share as well. It’s time to heal. It’s also time to govern and that will require the talents of many including Samantha Powers.

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texan4hillary
November 29th, 2008 01:40

powers is a very bright woman whose work im very familiar with. her studies on genocide are must reads in graduate courses. she won the pulitzer. she does much with the us holocaust museum and other centers. themonster thing is old news to me. we could use someone with a great conscience of genocide and history in govt.

November 29th, 2008 13:12

Yes, you’re right. Powers’ works on genocide are seminal. It’s also now really a matter between Senator Clinton and Professor Powers. It’s their peace to make. The irony, of course, is that it seems that Clinton is on track to be Powers’ boss.

DandyTiger
November 29th, 2008 13:22

I think Power’s intelligence and experience is exactly why Hillary and she could mend fences and work together. They’re both smart people who want to do good things. Maybe they can be a model.

WigWag
November 29th, 2008 14:30

There’s no question that Samantha Powers is smart. I read her book on Sergio Vieira de Mello and found it interesting. But her form of liberal internationalism is little more than the flip side of neoconservatism. Liberal internationalists like Powers are as anxious as neocons to intervene anywhere in the world where they think they can do good things. The only difference between them is what they think is worth intervening for.

It’s actually quite ironic that one of Powers’ jobs on the transition team may be to prepare Hillary Clinton for her confirmation hearings.

I am a huge fan of Hillary’s but she is making a very big mistake accepting the Secretary of State position. And Obama is making a mistake asking Powers to join his team.

November 29th, 2008 15:24

Well, I think Wigwag makes good points. I am a blend of liberalist and realist in my approach to international politics. I don’t think that Powers’ liberalist views are the problem but rather that she is a Wilsonian interventionist.

William Appleman Williams wrote a great book years ago on the Tragedy of American Diplomacy. The basic premise is that despite being well-meaning US foreign policy has a tendency to be hegemonistic. How do we break this tendency to be a hegemon?

I also agree that Hillary shouldn’t accept the SoS post. Her voice on domestic issues would be lost certainly in the near term and possibly forever more.

texan4hillary
November 29th, 2008 15:50

power to my knowledge has not been offered a job at state. she is working with albright on transition for state. she is not paid. but ehr work is seminal on genocide. im a historian and have doen much on genocide-she is one hell of a mind. the failures of the state dept are notorious in dealing with genocide. i hope hillary can make a proactive sos on the issue

WigWag
November 29th, 2008 19:51

By accepting President Elect Obama’s invitation to become Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton will destroy her career. I think Obama selected her primarily because he believes that she is one of the two politicians in America most capable of actually negotiating a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians (the other is Bill Clinton). Obama picked Senator Clinton because he genuinely believes she is smart and tenacious enough to deliver a deal and because she, more than anyone else, is in a position to cajole the Israelis into making unpalatable choices. Clinton accepted because brokering a peace deal is unfinished business for her family and because it is the type of achievement that would be remembered forever. She thinks she can do it. President-Elect Obama and Hillary Clinton are both wrong. She will fail at bringing the sides together, not for lack of trying, but because under the present circumstances, a deal is not achievable.

The Israel-Palestine dispute will be Senator Clinton’s waterloo. It will be her second major failure (health care reform was the first). And she will not be able to recover from it politically. Senator Clinton was the most well equipped person in America to forge a health care deal in the 1990s. She knew more about the subject than anyone and she worked tirelessly to bring it about. She failed not for lack of trying and not because she made serious mistakes, but because during an era when the American public still disliked “big Government,” universal health care was simply a bridge too far for her or for anyone else. Similarly a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians is a bridge too far

There will be no peace in the Middle East as long as the Americans and Europeans are more anxious for a deal than the Israelis and Palestinians are. By staking her career on her ability to forge a settlement, Hillary is making a huge mistake.

November 29th, 2008 21:20

What’s worse is that polls are now showing Likud victory. If Likud wins, forget any deal.

IMRA Poll.

Also look at Jerome Armstrong’s post on my DD.

Israel Going Right.

texan4hillary
November 30th, 2008 01:15

the economy is killing livini. and good old olmet is about to be incidted and wont leave his post so livini can have a leg up as pm.israel’s govt is highly corrupt-more than ours. and im a jew with ties there. if its bibi then there ont be much to see for hillary and she and obama will move to u know the big problems-iraq and afghanistan. and half the world it seems. the israeli public favors peace and will give up w bank and golan. olmert said israel had to go back to 67 borders. sharon said time to go. ben gurion said they cannot hold w bank etc.. lets hope livini an turn matters around

WigWag
November 30th, 2008 06:24

In a recent Washington Post op ed Brent Scowcroft and Zbig Brzezinski laid out the 5 elements that everyone knows will be required for peace to be achieved: (1) Israel’s return to its 1967 borders with small, mutually agreed upon modifications that provide territorial compensation to the Palestinians; (2) a demilitarized Palestinian state; (3) no right of return to Israeli territory for Palestinian refuges but instead refugees will be compensated financially by the international community; (4) a shared Jerusalem which is the Capitol of both states and (5) a Nato peacekeeping presence on the Palestinian side of the border to insure Israeli security and train Palestinian police.

The Israeli and Palestinian governments are both far too invested in the status quo to agree to the elements that Scowcroft and Brzezinski outline. Nothing Senator Clinton says or does will change that. Failure for her (or anyone else) is virtually guaranteed.

Israel won’t share Jerusalem or uproot the settlers when the peace that results makes them less physically secure not more secure. Hamas won’t relinquish control of Gaza even if they lose the next election (April) and they won’t give up their dream of a greater Palestine when the only payoff will be Nato troops in Gaza and the West Bank for decades.

I laugh when people say that it’s the political elites in Israel and Palestine that can’t make a deal, but the people really want peace. If that’s true why did the Palestinians elect Hamas ony two years ago and why are the Israelis poised to elect Netanyahu?

If Palestinians and Israelis really preferred peace to the status quo they would both be electing their most dovish political parties not their most recalcitrant political parties.

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