Clinton’s Rules of Disorder

Samantha Power has resigned from the Obama campaign after calling Hillary Clinton “a monster”:

Here’s her statement, just sent out by the campaign:

“With deep regret, I am resigning from my role as an advisor the Obama campaign effective today. Last Monday, I made inexcusable remarks that are at marked variance from my oft-stated admiration for Senator Clinton and from the spirit, tenor, and purpose of the Obama campaign. And I extend my deepest apologies to Senator Clinton, Senator Obama, and the remarkable team I have worked with over these long 14 months.”

In an interview with The Scotsman, Power called Hillary a “monster” and said other less-than-flattering things about her. Despite her prompt apology yesterday, the Hillary camp demanded her resignation this morning.

Less than two hours later, she’s out.

The Clinton campaign exerted enormous pressure on team Obama to get rid of Power:

There are advisers and then there are advisers. Power is Barack Obama’s Condi Rice.

A Harvard Law grad, former foreign correspondent, and Pulitzer Prize winning author, Power left her Harvard faculty gig to go work on Obama’s Senate staff for a year. It might be a little condescending to say she schooled him on foreign policy, but that’s close to accurate. In the constellation of Obama advisers, the 37-year-old Irish-born Power has as high a profile and as close a relationship to the candidate as anyone.

All of which is to say that her intemperate comments have put her and Obama in a bind — and the Clinton campaign knows it.

Clinton’s sanctimonious response to Power’s insult is, of course, quite hypocritical given some of the loose lips in her campaign. One reporter asked her about that, pointblank, during her Hattiesburg, Mississippi, news conference, and she was clearly rattled:

Q. How is being called a monster any different than Obama camp being called ken starr?

HRC: You know, I am, you know, very focused on this campaign and you’ve made the comparison between those two…

Q. You[r] spokesman made that comparison.

HRC: I think one is an ad hominem attack and one is a historical reference.

Q. But he said that he did not see how anybody imitating Ken Starr would win the Democratic nomination.

HRC: Well, I think that is a true statement.

Q. When Bob Johnson raised the issue of Sen. Obama’s drug use, you didn’t act quickly on that.

HRC: Well, we did repudiate it and he apologized.

Q. There was no repudiation immediately. Immediately, your campaign said he was talking about community organizing. Then he came out and said he was actually referring to his drug use and no one heard anything else from your campaign.

HRC: Well no, yes you did. You said he apologized and we accepted his apology.

I want to close by pointing to a truly superb piece by Andrew Sullivan about the way Clinton’s personal and political style is shaping this race, and what it’s doing to this country’s long-term political well-being. It’s too difficult to pick a quote from this post — so here’s the entire thing:

The new meme is that politics has returned to normal and that this election will now be run by Clinton rules. Many are relieved by this. You could sense the palpable discomfort among many in Washington that their world might actually shift a little next year. But if elections are primarily about fear and mud, and who best operates in a street fight, Beltway comfort returns. This we know. This we understand. This we already have the language to describe. And, the feeling goes, the Clintons can win back the White House in this atmosphere. What she is doing to Obama she can try to do to McCain. Maybe Limbaugh will help her out again.

What I think this misses are the cultural and social consequences of beating Obama (or McCain) this way. I don’t mean beating Obama because the Clintons’ message is more persuasive, or because the Clintons’ healthcare plan is better, or because she has a better approach to Iraq. I mean: beating him by a barrage of petty attacks, by impugning his clear ability to be commander-in-chief, by toying with questions about his “Muslim past”, by subtle invocation of the race card, by intermittent reliance on gender identity politics, by taking faux offense to keep the news cycle busy (“shame on you, Barack Obama!”) and so on. If the Clintons beat Obama this way, I have a simple prediction. It will mean a mass flight from the process. It will alter the political consciousness of an entire generation of young voters – against any positive interaction with the political process for the foreseeable future. I’m not sure that Washington yet understands the risk the Clintons are taking with their own party and the future of American politics.

The reason so many people have re-engaged with politics this year is because many sense their country is in a desperate state and because only one candidate has articulated a vision and a politics big enough to address it without dividing the country down the middle again. For the first time in decades, a candidate has emerged who seems able to address the country’s and the world’s needs with a message that does not rely on Clintonian parsing or Rovian sleaze. For the first time since the 1960s, we have a potential president able to transcend the victim-mongering identity politics so skillfully used by the Clintons. If this promise is eclipsed because the old political system conspires to strangle it at birth, the reaction from the new influx of voters will be severe. The Clintons will all but guarantee they will lose a hefty amount of it in the fall, as they richly deserve to. Some will gravitate to McCain; others will be so disillusioned they will withdraw from politics for another generation. If the Clintons grind up and kill the most promising young leader since Kennedy, and if they do it not on the strength of their arguments, but by the kind of politics we have seen them deploy, the backlash will be deep and severe and long. As it should be.

He has a million little donors. He has brought many, many Republicans and Independents to the brink of re-thinking their relationship with the Democratic party. And he has won the majority of primaries and caucuses and has a majority of the delegates and popular vote. This has been a staggering achievement – one that has already made campaign history. If the Clintons, after having already enjoyed presidential power for eight long years, destroy this movement in order to preserve their own grip on privilege and influence in Democratic circles, it will be more than old-fashioned politics. It will be a generational moment – as formative as 1968. Killing it will be remembered for a very, very long time. And everyone will remember who did it – and why.

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