Samantha Power said something intemperate, so she was forced to resign. Geraldine Ferraro said something racially offensive, so she was forced to resign. A member of Obama’s LGBT leadership council, Maxim Thorne, said something rude about Clinton sex scandals, so she was forced to resign. Clinton officials in Iowa sent around the Obama email smear, so they resigned. Clinton’s New Hampshire chairman resigned. The Clinton campaign wants Gen. McPeak to resign from Obama’s team. Now, Rev. Jeremiah Right may have to resign from some honorary position in the Obama campaign.
I can generally take or leave James Carville, but in a Financial Times op-ed today, he makes a compelling case that there’s just been too many resignations lately. (British spelling and grammar throughout) (via Alex Koppelman)
In this, the most fascinating and longest-running Democratic primary process of our time, we were presented with a silly moment that unfortunately is all too reflective of modern American culture. Consider the case of one Samantha Power.
Ms Power, a senior foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama, was forced to resign after she referred to Hillary Clinton (whom I admire and am supporting) as a “monster”. She tried to retract her statement but, being unable to declare something off the record ex post facto (do the Scots even have journalism rules?), her words were printed.
What is now a shamefully predictable brouhaha ensued. Ms Power performed the ritual act of American political hara-kiri and resigned. Now, every time one campaign’s surrogate says something mildly offensive about their rival, resignation calls are swift. This sort of hyper-sensitivity diminishes everyone who engages in it. Politics is a rough business and yet there seems to be an effort by the commentariat to sanitise US politics to some type of high-level Victorian debating society…. Have we really reached the point where you cannot call your opponent a monster (even if you think her one)?
The point of the Carville piece isn’t about Power’s flap specifically, but rather the rash of resignations, some of which may have been unnecessary. Carville, who is an active Clinton supporter and surrogate, takes a reasonably even-handed approach to all of this.
Indeed, this was an especially helpful stroll down memory lane.
It is not the attacks that are unprecedented; it is the shocked reaction to them. I think back to the 1992 Bill Clinton campaign, in which I played a role. The morning after the New Hampshire primary, Paul Begala, my colleague, belittled the victory of Senator Paul Tsongas by arguing Mr Clinton’s comeback was a much bigger story. In doing so, Mr Begala called Mr Tsongas a “son of a bitch”. Mr Clinton asked him to write an apology note but also requested that it not affect his aggressiveness. The story lasted one day.
Later in the campaign, my then girlfriend and now wife, Mary Matalin, called my client “a philandering, pot-smoking draft dodger”. Naturally, someone made a perfunctory call for her to resign, which got nowhere, and we all got a good laugh and moved on.
I’d forgotten about most of this, and Carville’s quite right. Begala called a Democratic candidate a “son of a bitch,” and no one seemed to care. Power inadvertently called Clinton a “monster,” quickly apologized, praised Clinton to the hilt, and still had to give up her post — because that kind of talk “has no place” in a presidential campaign.
Except, of course, that it does.
Carville even takes on the Ferraro flap.
Rather than having to resign, as she has just done, she should have been dispatched to a cruise ship for a few weeks of sightseeing and spa treatments. I hear Antarctica is a popular destination this time of year.
Now, there is an obvious problem here. Different people are going to have different sensitivities. This is a line-drawing argument — few are going to argue that a candidate’s aides can say anything, no matter how offensive, and expect to keep their jobs. But drawing distinctions is inherently tricky.
Nevertheless, Carville makes a persuasive case. The hair-trigger reactions, and the near-constant calls for resignations and dismissals, has grown quite tiresome. Carville concludes, “So Ms Power, come back to work. New York Times, get out of these candidates’ way. Everybody take a deep breath. And if somebody refers to their rival as a little pissant, do not sweat it. Nobody seems to even know what that is.”
Fair enough.