With the season now officially over, let's take a look back at the primary campaigns' most notable casualties--those boosters lucky enough to have resigned, been fired or publicly chastised by one of the Presidential campaigns.
In this edition of the Scalp Count:
Barack Obama's foreign policy adviser Samantha Power, pastor Jermemiah Wright and the Trinity United Church of Christ.
McCain campaign staffers and federal lobbyists Douglas Goodyear, Doug Davenport and Tom Loeffler. Plus: Bonus spiritual baggage toted by pastors John Hagee and Rod Parsley!
Clinton New Hampshire chair Bill Shaheen and '84 veep nominee Geraldine Ferraro.
See how the mighty have fallen. A timeline awaits you in the extended entry ...
There is something that has been bothering me about the still bubbling argument over whether or not the Scotsman should have published the "monster" quote from Samantha Power that basically ended her career as a high-level foreign policy advisor. Specifically, I don't like how those on both sides of the argument are hiding behind institutional standards of "journalistic ethics" to justify their positions. This is probably because, as a blogger, which ultimately means I am the proprietor of an independent media outlet, I have no institution to hide behind myself and, as such, I would not have published the quote.
Here is what the journalist who recorded the quote, Gerri Peev, which the editor of The Scotsman then published, said in justification (emphasis mine):
Because I don't know what the convention is in American journalism, but in Britain here we have very firm rules about the fact that generally you establish whether a conversation or interview is on or off the record before it actually happens...we are not in this business to self-censor ourselves; we are in this business to print the truth."
The justification for publishing the quote is entirely based on "conventions," "rules," "business," and other institutional norms. There seems to be no appreciation that Peev and her editor were personally responsible for ending someone's political advisor career over something really, really stupid. This strikes me as very much hiding behind vague institutional rules and regulations in an effort to elide personal responsibility. Such hiding is impossible when someone is a blogger, since any pretext of protection from a larger institution is wiped away. When you are an independent blogger, there are no vaguely constructed curtains of professional conventions, rules and business practices to hide behind. If I do something, then I am responsible for it, not some larger institution or professional code. And so, I'm not going to publish a quote like that, because I am not going to get Samantha Power fired over something really stupid that she obviously did not want published.
The largest difference between the progressive blogosphere and established media outlets is not that we are partisan or ideological, but rather that we have completely different business models and relationships to larger institutions. While most established media outlets are large companies and / or sections of enormous corporate conglomerates, the progressive blogosphere mainly operates on a small business and hobbyist model with very few employees and a lot of direct fundraising in order to stay afloat. We do not have fixed salaries, editors, and professional codes of conduct on which to rely. Basically, we are out there on our own, and our actions directly reflect on us as individuals rather than on our relationship with large institutions. This ultimately results in a very different set of actions we are willing to undertake, or not undertake. What we do is very humanist, or at least human, and as such is antithetical to the sort of "gotcha" politics that has become the bread and butter of established political reporting, where consistency and decorum and supposedly valued above all other personal attributes (or, antithetical unless you are an asshole who doesn't care about destroying other people). If I start engaging in personal takedowns over something really stupid and pointless, then the same thing becomes fair game against me. By contrast, if you have an institution to hide behind and protect you, such human considerations never enter into the equation.
If one conceptualizes the exchange between Power and Peev as an exchange between the institution of the Obama campaign and the institution of journalism, then you probably think publishing the quote was justified. However, if you conceptualize it as an exchange between two people, Samantha Power and Gerri Peev, then like me you probably think Peev is a bit of a jerk more interested in taking people down than having an actual, meaningful personal exchange. And I think that where someone situates himself in that debate probably has a lot to do with your personal relationship to an institution: are you acting on your own, or on behalf of something larger than you? Do you have an institution to protect you, or not?
I have always hated the way many journalists use some abstract, vague, quasi-mythical "journalistic code" to attack bloggers as irresponsible and unethical. I feel no imperative to follow the code of an institution in which I do not operate. In fact, I think that the 'journalistic code" has led us down a path of dehumanized, "gotcha" politics, where there is no forgiveness, not gradients of being more or less consistent, and no accounting for the fact that journalists and politicians are all human beings.
Update: To be clear, I'm not trying to justify what Power said, or to argue that by printing the quote Peev was wrong. Instead, I'm arguing that Power was fired for her interaction with Peev and the Scotsman, not for her interaction with some sort of abstract journalistic standards. I am tired of journalists hiding behind institutions and vague abstractions in order to elide responsibility for what they themselves have done. When you are in my situation, and there is no pretense of institutional support to hide behind, it is impossible to avoid your personal responsibility for what you write.
When journalists hide behind a code of ethics to justify what they do as individuals, it is a cop-out, pure and simple. Stenography is not the job of a journalist, and everyone edits. If stenography was their jobs, they would just post audio or video files of their interviews and be done with it. Instead, everyone crops, edits, and summarizes, and leaves in what they feel are the important parts. In this case, Peev left in what she felt were the important parts, and her editor agreed with that assessment. For Peev to then hide behind an abstract code elides her personal role in the matter. Journalists can print whatever they want to print. Just don't claim that, when you keep something in an article and leave other things out, that "the code made me do it." That is just pathetic. Take responsibility for your own editorial decisions, rather than passing the buck off to an abstraction.
I've noted before that the Obama campaign is being culled. Three extremely bright members of his team - Samantha Power, Austan Goolsbee, and Susan Rice - have been undermined by recent statements (or non-statements) they have made. Both Power and Rice represent in one form or another the more liberal side of the foreign policy establishment, and Goolsbee is simply an outsider to policy-making.
Guess who isn't being culled from Obama's advisory staff? Powerful foreign policy and intelligence advisor John Brennan, who said the following.
There is this great debate over whether or not the telecom companies should in fact be given immunity for their agreement to provide support and cooperate with the government after 9/11. I do believe strongly that they should be granted that immunity, because they were told to do so by the appropriate authorities that were operating in a legal context, and so I think that's important. And I know people are concerned about that, but I do believe that's the right thing to do. I do believe the Senate version of the FISA bill addresses the issues appropriately.
A good interview with Brennan is here. Let's just say he's a creepy man who refers to America as 'the homeland'.
But it's Rice, Power, and Goolsbee who get nailed. The adults are in charge in DC, apparently.
... This is not an argument for or against Obama's election, it's just an observation about how his inner circle is being retooled by the press and DC elites.
I really liked Samantha Power's book on genocide, but remember this?
"We're going to hear something very unusual on the left, which is a genuine pride in what America can be again," she told me. "It's a bigger story about failing states. It's not a regional story. It's more freedom from fear and freedom from war."
Insulting liberals is a standard Obama tactic, and just as the nastiness towards Clinton is coming from the top (yes, Power saying that Clinton is a monster is in fact a reflection of that), so too is Obama's tendency to dismiss and sneer at progressives.
There's a dual claim from the Obama camp that I find irritating. One, they want to be taken seriously and given credit as progressives, and two, they want to insult the left and dismiss the idea that one should have a coherent ideology or fight domestically in politics. There's a lot more here, but for the sake of this blog post, I'll keep it simple. I would only care about Power one way or the other if I had seen her lift a finger for any progressive politician in any race before this one, speak out in 2003 during the Iraq war, in 2006 during the Lamont race, or demonstrate some sense political courage aside from attaching herself to a charismatic politician after his election in 2004.
So Austan Goolsbee, key Obama economic advisor, and Samantha Power, key Obama foreign policy advisor, have both been knifed in political fights. Goolsbee was blamed for the NAFTA discussion with Canadian officials, which I doubt he is actually at fault for. And Power called Clinton a 'monster', which is a gaffe, but not something resignation-worthy.
It certainly seems like the adults in DC are culling Obama's inner circle.
Samantha Power's Interview with Tucker Carlson:
(h/t sagereader)
Power lays out Obama's Iraq plan in detail, addressing the details of a residual force:
Power: What Obama has said is that he would start withdrawing immediately. The generals with whom he's consulted have told him that you can do so responsibly out at about a brigade or two a month.
And he wants to keep a residual force to do counter-terrorism, as distinct from counter-insurgency. It's unclear yet whether that would be in Kurdistan or where you would put a kind of quick reaction force. But also, as you suggest, to maintain diplomatic installations and so forth. You don't want to leave civilians in Iraq without the protection that they need to do their work --- which is in fact where the future of Iraq is going to rest, is with diplomacy and with the politics of the place.
The important things to note here, combined with Obama's statement yesterday on NPR, are that the Obama team is talking about a rapid response force, focused solely on counter-terrorism and not counter-insurgency, stationed in Kurdistan or in neighboring countries --- in either case, with American troops away from daily policing patrols and government protection.
In the most interesting exchange, Tucker Carlson addressed Obama's qualifier that he would train Iraqi security forces only if those forces are proven not to pursue sectarian ends:
Tucker: So Senator Obama says that we should not continue to train Iraqi security forces if they maintain their sectarian cast? Will stopping the training of those forces make them less sectarian? Wouldn't it make them more sectarian if we pull out and stop training them?
Power: Well, the fact of the matter is that we've been arming the Bahdi militia to do things to Sunni that I don't think the American taxpayer feel completely comfortable with... with our taxpayer dollars going to that cause.
We have to be careful with just hemorrhaging more money, more arms into the sinkhole that is the central government --- that ultimately is the very Iranian-dominated government that President Bush warns will come with a withdrawal.
In very tough language, Power argues that government security forces that American troops are training are, at a minimum, being used for sectarian ends and, at worst, using American arms and training to commit war crimes. She doesn't equivocate when Tucker challenges the position but emphasizes that the Iraqi government must reach political compromises before American training continues.
If you read Obama's plan carefully, you'll also see this:
Refuse to Provide U.S. Assistance to Sectarian Actors: The Obama plan would encourage the Iraqi government to adopt policies that give regional and local groups a sufficient stake in the center so they are deterred from attempting to overthrow the central government or completely break away. He would work to ensure local communities can protect themselves without threatening other groups. He would fight for greater transparency in local security efforts to reduce anxieties among all sects that America intends to support one sect over another. Obama also would crack down on the use of American foreign assistance to sectarian ends or by sectarian actors. This problem was made clear by two recent studies, one of which concluded the United States cannot account for 190,000 weapons provided to Iraqi Security Forces and another which found weapons issued by the United States to Iraqi Security Forces among Kurdish militants in Turkey.
The net result of these preconditions is a scaling back of the size of the residual force to predominantly protecting American embassy staff and other civilian personnel.
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