Obama Adviser Critical of Clinton Resigns
By Peter Slevin and Perry Bacon Jr.
Updated: 1:39 p.m.
CHICAGO - Samantha Power, an outspoken foreign policy advisor to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), stepped down this morning after calling Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) a "monster" in an interview with a Scottish newspaper. She said Clinton was "stooping to anything" to win the Democratic nomination.
In a statement released by the campaign as Obama prepared for a day of campaigning in Wyoming, Power called her remarks "inexcusable" and said she was resigning from her unpaid position "with deep regret."
"She made a decision to resign and we accepted it," Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said aboard the senator's charter.
"Last Monday, I made inexcusable remarks that are at marked variance from my oft-stated admiration for Sen. Clinton and from the spirit, tenor and purpose of the Obama campaign," Power wrote. "And I extend my deepest apologies to Sen. Clinton, Sen. Obama and the remarkable team I have worked with over these long 14 months."
In a conference call earlier today several Clinton supporters suggested that Power should step down.
Later in the day, the Clinton campaign called attention to another interview Power gave while on book tour in the U.K. Power downplayed her candidate's campaign pledge to withdraw all troops from Iraq in 16 months, telling the BBC yesterday that his proposal was "a best-case scenario."
"You can't make a commitment in March of 2008 about what circumstances are going to be like in January of 2009," she said. "He will, of course, not rely upon some plan that he's crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. Senator. He will rely upon a plan - an operational plan - that he pulls together in consultation with people who are on the ground to whom he doesn't have daily access now, as a result of not being the president. So to think - it would be the height of ideology to sort of say, 'Well, I said it, therefore I'm going to impose it on whatever reality greets me."
Obama's Iraq plan calls for removing all U.S. combat troops from Iraq in 16 months if he is elected president, by withdrawing one to two brigades (around 3,000 soldiers) at a time. Clinton has also said she would also withdraw one or two brigades month, but has not set a firm timetable for all combat troops to be out of Iraq.
Power's remarks were the latest controversy involving one of Obama's policy advisers. The candidate spent the days before the primaries in Ohio and Texas explaining a meeting between Austan Goolsbee, his top economic policy adviser, and Canadian officials, who said Goolsbee suggested Obama's rhetoric against some free trade agreements was simply political rhetoric. Goolsbee denied making the remark. Susan Rice, who served in the State Department in the Clinton administration but now advises Obama on foreign policy, spoke yesterday of an ad in which Clinton touts her ability to handle a crisis at 3 a.m. by saying "they're both not ready to have that 3 a.m. phone call."
Posted at 11:47 AM ET on Mar 7, 2008 |
