Gaffes May Go 'Tit for Tat' but Obama Has Lost His Tower of Foreign Policy Power

A clean campaign that focuses solely on the issues is what both Senators Clinton and Obama claim that they want, and wish to promote the idea of a democratic party united. But the thing is, the Democratic ticket for the 2008 election is being heatedly contested between the two, so this unification cannot happen just yet.  Thus, in the heat of campaigning, both Clinton and Obama have experienced separations from amicability and the issues, as surrogates from each campaign have made some very public and on-the-record blunders. 

 

In politics, I am learning that it seems to go tit for tat on a lot of things, and to keep with the pun, Obama senior foreign policy advisor, Samantha Power’s mistake (tit) of calling Hillary a “monster” has been answered by Clinton surrogate, Geraldine Ferraro’s gaffe (tat) when she made a remark about senator Obama being in the position he is in because he is a black man.  Ferraro, being a part of the Clinton campaign, which has time and again been labeled as the more aggressive and abrasive of the two, has not stepped down or shown any sort of remorse for her words that she claims have been drastically spun out of context by the Obama campaign after the fact, as she explains in a very defensive interview she gave with Diane Sawyer.  During the interview, Ferraro also tries hard to make clear that she was never even part of the Clinton campaign in the first place. 

 

On the flipside, Power, a newcomer to political campaigning, keeps with the “cool” nature associated with the Obama campaign when she publicly announced that she deeply regretted her remarks at a scheduled appearance at the N.Y.U. Center for Global Affairs. As she communicated through a March 16^th New York Times article saying, “if she could get through the talk without weeping…it would be a first since the controversy began,” she put heavy emphasis on her tremendous remorse.

 

We are learning in class that it is important for campaigns to keep things consistent, and the responses from both surrogates seem to be inline with their respective campaigns, which I find curious, because I feel when a mistake is made in these sort of high scrutiny situations, it is best to apologize.  I wonder if it was a strategic move on Ferraro’s part to stand so strongly by her statement for the sake of Hillary’s “hard-hitting” campaign, even though Clinton herself has publicly renounced it.

 

I’m focusing in on this subject, more particularly on Power, because after learning and researching about her, I am just as intrigued by her as the media is.  She is young, only 37, and is described in a July 2007 article from Men’s Vogue entitled “A League of Her Own,” as being “this tall redhead of enormous passion.” The article goes own to credit her as being “that rare Harvard brainiac who can boast both a Pulitzer Prize and a mean jump shot,” and that her nickname from high school basketball, “the tower of power” has followed her well into her career, especially in her work with the Obama campaign.   I later put it together that I have actually studied her 2003 Pulitzer Prize winning, A Problem From Hell, which addresses the issue of genocide, in a political science course I took my freshman year.  It was really an eye-opener and an interesting read. 

 

Power is a journalist turned Harvard professor, and prior to joining the Obama campaign, she taught American foreign policy at the Kennedy School of Government for the past six years.  Richard Holbrooke, a respected colleague of Power and member of the Hilary campaign, praises in the article from Men’s Vogue and says that Power’s “students are swept up in the Romance of her—the responsibility she personifies…Obama is lucky to have her.”

 

Obama was very lucky to have her because she is a strong mind in an area Obama has been criticized to be lacking in experience, know-how, etc.  Power, unfortunately is gone now. She has stepped down from the campaign, and has articulated in a bit of an informal apologia that if Clinton should win the nomination, she will 100 percent back her with “just as much enthusiasm,” and that despite her comment, she thinks very highly of Hillary, who she has found to be “incredibly warm, funny.”  Power goes own to take full responsibility for her gaffe and remarks, “I still cannot even believe the words came out of my mouth.”  She ends the interview with traces of transformative strategy, giving the whole situation a larger context, saying the campaign was getting “tense” and “in the heat of the moment,” she slipped.  Also, she makes clear that she is a newcomer to politics that she is “a bit of a political rookie, a policy person, a scholar,” and new to campaigning. 

 

Regardless, Power is a huge loss to the Obama campaign and she goes to show, as mentioned in the New York Times article, that a person “so naked about her passions” may have trouble surviving in the political world where “tact and coolness usually trump spontaneity.”