Buh-Bye, Sam

From the latest Peggy Noonan column at wsj.com, "It was like Claude Rains summing up the meaning of everything in the film "Lawrence of Arabia": "One of them's mad and the other is wholly unscrupulous." It's the moment when you realize you just heard the truth, the meaning underlying all the drama. "They win in the end." Noonan was playing off a quote from Christopher Hitchens giving his opinion that Hillary will be the next president, because "there's something horrible and undefeatable about people who have no life except the worship of power...people who don't want the meeting to end, the people who just are unstoppable, who only have one focus, no humanity, no character, nothing but the worship of money and power. They win in the end."

I love it when I get to dovetail two of my favorites.

Sometimes interesting events just fall into a person's life. I'm a glutton for politics. No broadcast on C-SPAN is too boring for me. I want to hear what those in power are up to with my future, how they are managing my country. It is important to check out those advising your political candidate of choice. It's important to know who a presidential candidate may bring along into the White House. As fate would have it, I've had a fly on the wall point of view into the operations of some political machines. I don't need a therapist to tell me where my cynical outlook comes from and I look at that as a money saver. One area of the country I have been privy to behind the scenes is Chicago. Comes in handy this time around, right?

I read a piece by John Kass in the Chicago Tribune yesterday. He writes about the "Chicago Way". Mostly he was dealing with Tony Rezko and the connection to Obama. It is fascinating to watch the rise of Obama, a man who would still be working with a non-profit on the south side of Chicago or in a corporate law firm, as his wife did, were it not for the political machine in Chicago. Obama has been quite successful at packaging himself as someone fresh and new and completely above the everyday politics. He has his old friend, the current governor of Massachusetts, another 40ish black man, dish out key catch phrases for rallys, encouraging the chanting of the crowds. His minister, the leader of a church preaching black supremacy, supplies the title of his latest best selling book. And, Tony Rezko, a longtime political insider in Chicago, a noted money man, is an old friend, going back some 20 years in friendship.

Interesting that a man born of a Kenyan father and a white mother from Kansas, raised in Indonesia and Hawaii, educated on the east coast at Harvard University, later settles in Chicago to lay the foundation for a political career.

One evening while watching C-SPAN I listened to an interview with Samatha Power, now a foreign policy adviser. Some would say Power is THE key foreign policy adviser. I've read articles on her recently at American Thinker, which lead me to articles in New Statesman magazine in England and in The Scotsman. Ms. Power is on a book tour now and it has brought her to Europe. That would be your first clue as to her world view.

Ms. Power may ring a bell with you as she has made a bit of news over her characterization of Hillary as 'a monster' to the foreign press, thinking it was an off the record conversation. Or so she claims. This morning the word is that she has resigned from the Obama campaign.

"Plans have already been made for Clinton's withdrawal. "If he does well,"she says, "one of the questions will be how to integrate the Clinton people. Because we want to maximise our technical expertise and be welcoming." Not all will be greeted with open arms, however: veterans of Bill's administrations, yes; others Power dimisses in pretty uncomplimentary terms. "We don't want to end up in a lowest-common-denominator operation, which is what, I think, actually, really hurt her." This interview was done the day before the Texas and Ohio primaries.

A speech she recently gave in California the week before about the subject of her new book, Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN special envoy to Iraq killed in a bombing in Baghdad in 2003, included focus on what is called the key of what she and Obama think is to be found in the book: "She mentions talking to dictators; promoting the concept of "dignity", possibly over democratisation and human rights; freedom from fear; humility about the world's complexity, and still rising to its challenges. "A number of people came up to me afterwards and said, 'Wow, that's the Obama doctrine,' and I was like, 'Oh my god, it is."' That from the New Statesman article.

What does 'the concept of dignity over democratisation and human rights' mean anyway? I'm like, oh my god.

Seems to me I remember George W. Bush talking about a humble foreign policy, too, as he ran for President.

A little more to chew on: "Obama has talked a lot about the importance of moving away from electocracy," she says, trying to move on to more comfortable territory, and suggesting that the way people actually live is more important than the 'reification of elections". "In terms of how radical the shift will be, I think it's very hard. There's going to be a huge foreign service and civil service that he will inherit, senators and congressmen who have already been elected. So I think he is one guy, trying to steer this ship of cacophonous agendas into a new place." The article continues: "In other words, promising to shut Guantanamo Bay, ban extraordinary rendition and pull troops out of Iraq within 18 months is fine. So is striking at al-Qaeda positions in Pakistan without the government's consent, an Obama line widely thought of as a gaffe when he delivered it last August."

Those fancy Harvard professors, advising the alleged candidate of the common man, sure do talk fancy, don't they? Change?

A little biography on Samantha Power: 1970 Born in Dublin, 1979 emigrates to U.S. with mother, 1988 studies history at Yale, 1993 war reporter in the former Yugoslavia, 1995 Harvard Law School, 1998 Founder exec. director of the Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy at Harvard, 2003 wins Pulitzer Prize, 2004 one of Time's top 100 thinkers, 2005 advisor to Obama, 2007 Anna Lindh professor of Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy, Harvard.

According to The Scotsman, she was head-hunted by Obama to become his foreign policy advisor in 2005 and she continues with her job as a columnist for Time magazine. Sounds like a conflict of interest to me.

You'll forgive me if I don't for a minute believe she will no longer be advising Obama and making standard nasty comments about the competition, off the record, of course. Change?