Spare me the outrage Clinton surrogates and party insiders

[mmonk]

The new strategy of going negative and trying to game the system by the Clinton campaign with the promise Obama made that his campaign would be above the negative politics combined to bring to an end, at least temporarily, to one of the brightest minds in the primary campaign. Though this unpaid foreign policy advisor through frustration of campaign tactics uttered the comment “monster” towards the Senator from New York in describing those campaign tactics to a reporter from The Scotsman, they were never intended to be on the record and when the reporter included it anyway, this advisor quickly publicly apologized. When the Clinton campaign got wind, the congressional surrogates of the campaign along with Terry McAuliffe began the gnashing of teeth and wailing demanding she resign which she subsequently did on March 7th in keeping with the Obama campaign’s promise of a different kind of politics. So exactly who is this advisor, another political hack?

Samantha Power, the recent foreign policy advisor in question, is the Anna Lindh Professor of the Practice of Global Leadership at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. She is the author of “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide , which won the 2003 National Book Critics Circle Award, the Council on Foreign Relations’ Arthur Ross Book Award for the best book on U.S. foreign policy, and the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction. She is a journalist reporting from places such as Burundi, Cambodia, East Timor, Rwanda, Kosovo and the Sudan. She also is a contributor to both The New Yorker and Time magazine. She was the founding executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School and is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School. She has a new book out titled Chasing The Flame: Sergio Vieira De Mello and the Fight To Save The World.

In keeping with the Clinton campaign’s theme of outrage, the question begs where was the outrage while 800,000 Rwandans were being slaughtered while Bill Clinton’s White House telephones were ringing off the hook? Is this cogent with the Clinton Campaign’s ad about a 3:00 a.m. telephone call? What was it, no oil pipeline? More and more people are seeing the wars and interventions by the U.S. as what they are, for business and multi-national corporate interests cynically cast as humanitarian endeavors and safety interests. The world knows it, the politicians know it, the American people don’t but some are beginning to know it. If one is to change the image of the U.S. in the world, it needs people like Samantha Power in foreign policy. This would be real change rather than change in perception or political party. And while these military interventions and subsequent dark themes such as torture camps and high civilian death tolls and refugee counts, may be done in the interests of U.S. corporations, their interests would probably be better served in the Samantha Power approach of world leader rather than international belligerent.

Maybe the unexpected support for Obama is more than speeches or cult of personality as cynically cast by the Clinton campaign. Maybe it’s people tired of all the hatred, divisions, and suspicion of politics in America. Maybe people would rather see the U.S. do something meaningful and decent in their name. Maybe it’s people telling the party insiders we’re onto you.

[mmonk]

1. A note on this.

I didn't want to post it here in GD: P. But given the title, I figured it would be moved to here. It's about priorities and the ridiculous things we get outraged over instead of what's important.