Dan Drezner responds to Jacob Heilbrun's claim that the Samantha Power affair highlights "the adversarial style of a new generation of Democratic foreign-policy mavens who have more in common with the raucous world of bloggers than the somber, oak-lined environs of the Council on Foreign Relations."
No doubt there are netrootsy types -- Spencer Ackerman, Glenn Greenwald and Matt Yglesias, for example -- who blog about foreign policy with a fierceness that matches Power's rhetoric. None of these guys are "Democratic foreign-policy mavens," however. On the other side of the ledger, the foreign policy mavens who populate either the Center for American Progress or Democracy Arsenal aren't terribly bellicose.Seriously, I'd like Heilbrunn or others to name names here. Is there a generation of bellicose mavens who slipped under my radar?
My guess is that Samantha Power was sui generis -- a crusading journalist who made the leap to policy advisor (the only other person I can think of who made a similar leap was Strobe Talbott.... minus the crusading). It's a pretty rare crossover.
I have to say, I think that the main problem was that Samantha Power was talking to the journalist from the Scotsman the way that journalists talk to other journalists. But of course, she isn't a journalist any more; she was the foreign policy advisor to a guy who wants us to make him the leader of the free world.
"new generation of Democratic foreign-policy mavens" tend to be just like their older counterparts - modeled after the institutions that trained them.
Most foreign policy mavens come from humanitities faculty backgrounds where a stab in the back always trumps a punch in the nose (economists are unusual in having it exactly the other way 'round).
As you've noted, Power is journalist who is relatively new to academia and thus unused to that paradigm. But there's no excuse for a journalist not to understand the difference between the interviewer and the interviewed.
Powers displayed the greatest sin possible for a foreign policy maven - she was niave.
Yeah, that sounds right. But wouldn't it be nice if the people who run our government were allowed to actually say what they think, rather than treating discourse as a battlefield with the press as the enemy?
I'd hope that if Obama does become president, or even wins the nomination, Power can be brought back in as a foreign policy analyst and this episode will go the way of "I'm not going to be baking cookies" and all the unfortunate things Hillary Clinton has said and has been unjustly demonized for during her career.
I really don't think Samantha Power is only a journalist. She does a lot more than that. But I like your take on the fact that if a "journalist" tell another "journalist" something, but then decides to take it back--then it never gets reported, even though it was said during an on-the-record interview. If that's the way it really works, then that's wrong.
Oh - I meant Megan's post sounded right. plebist... I don't know what is meant by "there's no excuse for" in this context. The reporter did something obnoxious which degraded political discourse, but Power should have known that reporters are assholes whose business is to degrade political discourse and therefore it's her fault? And the world is better off making sure that politics is only populated by people who never speak their minds and only engage in empty blather and gamesmanship with the press? Okay, whatever.
anony_mouse, sorry for taking "anony-mouse" for you...weird.
Anyway, I think several issues come up when a journalist interviews a source who says something colorful and then asks to take it off the record. The first is, just as a human being, do you really feel that you're so perfect that you never say anything inappropriate that you'd be horrified to see in print? Almost no one is like that; the people who are like that are pretty slick and calculating. So there's a moral level at which it simply feels obnoxious to be taking advantage of someone's lack of caution in that manner.
On the other hand, there's the question of the public interest. If the gaffe is something that's newsworthy because it reveals something substantive which the public ought to know, either factually or about policy views (if she'd said, say, "Iraq isn't worth a rat's ass," for example), then you may decide this outweighs the asshole factor of publishing it. In this case, I have trouble seeing what's substantively important about Samantha Power characterizing Hillary Clinton in a nasty way.
Third, there's the pragmatic issue for the reporter: is this going to hurt my or my paper's access - will I be able to cover this campaign anymore? There's no moral valence to this question, it's just a calculation. People do after all have the right not to talk to you if they don't trust you.
But finally, there's the normative question of what effect one's decision to print will have on public discourse. It is certainly true that the expanding zone of off-the-record and background-only quotes in recent years, especially in the White House, has been disastrous for public discourse. But incidents like this one only lead to more background-only quotes, withholding of information, "message control" and empty bullshit. If you want a public sphere where officials speak frankly with the press and the public and talk about their views, it is poisonous to treat them this way, taking colorful insults which they regret the instant they've made them and turning them into headline fodder.
Power should have known that reporters are assholes whose business is to degrade political discourse and therefore it's her fault?
Huh? I don't know whether it's reporter's "business" to degrade political discourse, but that's pretty much what they do, and someone in her position should know it. I, as a lieutenant, was briefed that you don't say anything to a reporter you don't want to see in print "off the record" or not, and she said it in an on the record interview. Yeah, it's her fault.
As to the more secretive than ever issue in your second post, you do know that by historical standards, the press plays an amazing game of gotcha with everybody. Back in the 30s, they kept the president being wheelchair-bound out of the mainstream press.
Because they realized that it would have no effect on his ability to govern.
You are speaking of a President who had enemies that would make Bill Clinton's or George Bush's enemies seem like good buddies. The difference was they believed that a man, any man, including the President was entitled to a certain degree of privacy.
You can't tell me that it was only Democrats or liberal reporters who knew about his disability. You can't tell me that none of the reporters for the Hearst syndicate knew that he needed a wheelchair.
Everyone in America knew the man had suffered from a case of polio. Everyone knew what happened to polio sufferers, it was perhaps the most dreaded disease of the time. I don't believe any reporter wanted to take away the hope that one could overcome the after effects of that terrible disease.
I do agree that Power was being naive talking to the reporter. But Power wasn't a Bumiller or Russert who compares a statement a politician made 20 or 30 years ago to one made last year and accuse them of being "flip-floppers" or changing their views for political expediency. She was a foreign correspondent who covered the Bosnian war.
I would like to see the actual text of the interview. Was the reporter trying to lead her into making the comment. Did she have a previous relationship with this reporter? Perhaps she lapsed into her old mentality, and was discussing this, at least in her mind, as a reporter.
jon--
You can't tell me that it was only Democrats or liberal reporters who knew about his disability. You can't tell me that none of the reporters for the Hearst syndicate knew that he needed a wheelchair.
Of course they knew. Same thing as how President Kennedy's affairs were an open secret among the press. But they just didn't print stuff like that back then. I was responding to brooksfoe's comment, trying to make the case that President Bush's relationship with the media is characterized by an obsequiousness unheard of in the history of the Republic.
I actually went "huh?" when I read her comment, since I think that the media is more eager to play gotcha with Bush than they were with Clinton, but I assumed it for the sake of argument.
I would like to see the actual text of the interview. Was the reporter trying to lead her into making the comment. Did she have a previous relationship with this reporter? Perhaps she lapsed into her old mentality, and was discussing this, at least in her mind, as a reporter.
That'd be good for curiousity's sake, but it doesn't actually change anything. I drafted my post before running out in a hurry, and left out a sentence: "...and she said it in an on the record interview" If I knew that, she definitely should have
When you're in a minefield, you only get one false step. Make sure you use your probe. She's been around that scene long enough that she should have known she was in a minefield.
jon--
You can't tell me that it was only Democrats or liberal reporters who knew about his disability. You can't tell me that none of the reporters for the Hearst syndicate knew that he needed a wheelchair.
Of course they knew. Same thing as how President Kennedy's affairs were an open secret among the press. But they just didn't print stuff like that back then. I was responding to brooksfoe's comment, trying to make the case that President Bush's relationship with the media is characterized by an obsequiousness unheard of in the history of the Republic.
I actually went "huh?" when I read her comment, since I think that the media is more eager to play gotcha with Bush than they were with Clinton, but I assumed it for the sake of argument.
I would like to see the actual text of the interview. Was the reporter trying to lead her into making the comment. Did she have a previous relationship with this reporter? Perhaps she lapsed into her old mentality, and was discussing this, at least in her mind, as a reporter.
That'd be good for curiousity's sake, but it doesn't actually change anything. I drafted my post before running out in a hurry, and left out a sentence: "...and she said it in an on the record interview" If I knew that, she definitely should have
When you're in a minefield, you only get one false step. Make sure you use your probe. She's been around that scene long enough that she should have known she was in a minefield.
Give me a minute here. Freud in his book on dreams posited certain rules as useful in interpreting dreams. Sometimes these rules are useful in understanding a person's musings. One of the principles of interpretation is to view something as a potential condensation. Samantha Power wrote a book on the Rwandan genocide which took place on Clinton's watch (for the book see the Ron Rosenbaum blog). Obviously S. Power viewed those who perpetrated the genocide as "monsters" but probably Hillary's boasting of her "experience" reminded Smantha to consider Hillary, absent some evidence of an attempt to intervene, as an accessory in some sense to the crime.
I was responding to brooksfoe's comment, trying to make the case that President Bush's relationship with the media is characterized by an obsequiousness unheard of in the history of the Republic.
That's not what I was saying. It's not the obsequiousness of the press that's unprecedented. It's the message control by the White House. Reporters don't use "senior administration official" because they suddenly became more obsequious; they do so because this White House has brought a corporate PR mentality to its relationship with the press. The tediousness of the political reporting over the last 8 years, reduced to trivialities or puffery; the black fog that has settled over much of the policymaking apparatus -- requiring journalists to cultivate links with aides who have fallen out of favor, who are the only ones willing to provide any information about what's going on inside -- result from this fortress mentality. This is certainly not an exclusively Republican illness. All political organizations have become more wary and media-oriented in the last 15 years. And the defensiveness is in part driven by the fact that political reporting has increasingly come to resemble celebrity reporting, concentrating on spats and gotcha quotes.
Brooksfoe is really smart. His first post makes most of the points worth making, though I wonder is Michael Brophy is also not onto something...
One thing I have found missing from the stories (because it isn't that substantive, but is worthy of a blog comment) is how Ms. Power just recently was responsible for Cass Sunstein, one of the most renowned constitutional law professor in the country, leaving the University of Chicago Law School for Harvard Law. It's really juicy gossip that he'd make such a high profile move for a (apparently very charming) woman 15 years his junior. It all just adds to her celebrity and notoriety...
But wouldn't it be nice if the people who run our government were allowed to actually say what they think, rather than treating discourse as a battlefield with the press as the enemy?
You are not able to do that in everyday life, why should you expect to be able to do so in politics?
You can speak freely only when what you say is unimportant to anybody, commenting on blog posts, for example.
"Because they realized that it would have no effect on his ability to govern." Shouldn't that be for the electorate to judge?
Brooksfoe,
I'd like to agree with you, but I can't quite make it there for two reasons.
First, you're suggesting that the press use more judgment in picking what to print and what to withhold. Given that I don't like many of their decisions now, I don't trust them to use good judgment, and so I'm not on board with the notion that they should start withholding even more information. But an end to gotcha games would be nice.
Second, I think the willingness on the part of anyone to make this kind of comment poisons our politics (and for that matter the English language itself) more than the printing of it. I understand the notion of an error, instantly regretted. But this was quite a big slip--one that you would be unlikely to make, I believe. There are few people in this world less likely to vote for HRC than I am (maybe if the R's nominate David Blomstrom), but she is most definitely not a "monster" in any meaningful sense. It is the ability to recognize this rather crucial fact which holds our nation together even when half of us wind up with someone other than our choice in power.
If HRC is a monster, then vote-buying, ballot-box-stuffing, and indeed bloody revolution are justified to keep her out of power. Powers does not believe any of the latter three, so she should know better than to even think the first.
I took my son (who's 3) to watch his first lacrosse game yesterday, and it got me thinking about my own games, many years ago. We used to beat the crap out of each other on the field, but there was no ill-will carried off of it. It would be well for our politicians, their advisors, and for that matter their supporters in the blogs to adopt a similar mentality.
The interview Power did for BBC Hardtalk at more or less the same time was more revealing of his entourage. (saw it twice - it may be available on the internet).
The interviewer took her arguments apart with ease, exposed contradictions to the point where she came out with something like "what Obama says today is certainly not what he would do because he will have more/different information".
It was really like "we can pull it over on Americans but with Europeans we are more savy because they are...". Her attitude was really insulting to me and revealing. I hope many will see it before they make a final decision.
requiring journalists to cultivate links with aides who have fallen out of favor, who are the only ones willing to provide any information about what's going on inside
...your objection to the Bush White House's dealings with the press is that they're good at message control?
Don't get me wrong, there's a great deal I don't like about Bush, but that's kind of a skill level 1 task for politicians. I'd hope the White House could handle it.
I'm not sure which is more of a head-scratcher, the idea that we need to go back 75 years to find decent examples of the 'Media's' control of information, or that this issue, regarding Powers, is getting any play, whatsoever..
Here, from 2000, is a list of un-, to little, covered stories: http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2000/index.html
The idea that our MSM is a great beacon, illuminating all corners, is a story unfit, for even fairies...
The idea that our MSM is a great beacon, illuminating all corners, is a story unfit, for even fairies...
I dig the channeling Emily Dickinson thing, but, yeah, no one made the claim you're debunking here.
--brooksfoe,
not that it matters much, I was responding to this: "..you do know that by historical standards, the press plays an amazing game of gotcha with everybody. Back in the 30s, they kept the president being wheelchair-bound out of the mainstream press."
Posted by CatCube | March 8, 2008 11:21 PM
sentiment..
Which is not exactly claiming that the media "is a great beacon, illuminating all corners." I picked that example to show how big a difference there is between 70 years ago and today in the deference afforded to political leaders. Complain all you want about not seeing your pet issues in the media--I think a few of them in your posted link are silly or blindingly obvious(Really? A company put profits first?)--but it's unimaginable that the wheelchair thing would go unremarked today.
I was overly sensitive to brooksfoe's comment. I saw shades of "Bush is the worst president ever on " I've gotten used to seeing it on claims of civil liberties, where apparently Bush's interlocuters have apparently forgotten that it use to be legal to own other human beings in the US. (That particular claim was not made here--I just drew the parallel in my own mind and spun the original comment into "Bush is the most hidingest president ever")
Rob Lyman,
If you can think of a way for someone who supports Obama to watch Hillary Clinton respond to the repeated lie that he is a Muslim (in widespread email chains, that he's not just Muslim but a Manchurian candidate out to destroy America) by saying, "There's nothing to base that on, as far as I know," and not to find that a mean and unsporting tactic, let me know.
I think Power was wrong to let her frustration get out of hand like that, but even at my mild-Obama-supporter level, it's getting really obnoxious to have to explain to my mother that her friends are idiots who don't know what they're talking about when they forward such nonsense. (The fact that my mother, who doesn't vote and is more interested in Indian politics than American, is getting these emails indicates just how far they're penetrating among a certain less-educated group of people.)
I would like for this to be a clean game, but it's very difficult with stuff like that poisoning the playing field. I can't look at someone who contributes to that and say, "Ah, we're just having a disagreement about how best to achieve an end." If you were OK with, say, the opposing lacrosse players' giving you a gratuitous whack on the head with their sticks just for the fun of disabling you, you're a bigger man than most of us.
From the abcnews blog:
Let's try just one of any number of ridiculous anti-Clinton smears.
HYPOTHETICAL STEVE KROFT: You don't believe that Senator Clinton killed Vince Foster?
HYPOTHETICAL BARACK OBAMA: Of course not. I mean that's, you know, that, there is no basis for that. You know, I take her on the basis of what she says, and, you know, there isn't any reason to doubt that.
HYPOTHETICAL KROFT: You said you take Sen. Clinton at her word that she didn't kill Vince Foster...
HYPOTHETICAL OBAMA: Right, right..
HYPOTHETICAL KROFT: ... you don't believe that she killed Vince Foster.
HYPOTHETICAL OBAMA: No! No! Why would I? There's nothing to base that on. As far as I know.
(Spare me the cry that we shouldn't act like there's anything wrong with being Muslim. Of course there isn't -- so long as you're not being associated with Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, jihadist madrassas, etc. In other words, so long as you're not Obama.)
If you were OK with, say, the opposing lacrosse players' giving you a gratuitous whack on the head with their sticks just for the fun of disabling you, you're a bigger man than most of us.
The head is by far the best place to get hit, both because it doesn't hurt a bit (that's what helmets are for) and because it's an automatic man-up for your team. As point for our man-down team, I always stopped shots on goal with my head whenever possible.
With that nit cheerfully picked, I'm not suggesting that HRC is blameless, or that fighting dirty in self-defense is never justified. Just that, as far as brooksfoe's "poisoning discourse" point goes, the fighting dirty itself is worse than having your dirty fighting exposed by the press.
To stretch the lacrosse analogy to the breaking point, our coach always stressed that revenge for cheap shots was allowed--as long as whatever we did was within the rules.