Back to Gideon Rachman
Some people are too open for their own good. That was certainly how I felt after interviewing Samantha Power last week.
I had expected her, as a senior adviser on foreign policy to Barack Obama, to be ultra-careful and to weigh every word. Not at all. She was open and amusing, willing to give long discursive answers on controversial subjects, happy to admit to doubts about her abilities to do a government job. I was charmed. But I left the lunch wondering whether she was really cut out for politics.
My doubts were swiftly and brutally borne out. Ms Power was on an exhausting book tour in Britain and giving scores of interviews. In one of them, with The Scotsman newspaper, she made an off-the-record comment suggesting Hillary Clinton, Mr Obama’s rival for the Democratic nomination, was a “monster”. Within hours she was forced to resign from the Obama campaign.
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This blog covers a variety of topics from US foreign policy to European politics and the Middle East - and whatever else happens to be in the news or catch my attention. I travel a lot and often post blogs from around the world. Many of my posts are intended to spark discussion or to solicit readers' views. I joined the FT as chief foreign affairs commentator in 2006, after a 15-year career at The Economist which included stints as a correspondent in Brussels, Bangkok and Washington. I write a weekly column on foreign affairs, which appears in the paper on Tuesdays.
