It’s been a week of collective foot-in-mouth for the once-dignified Team Obama.
Highlights have included the news – on the eve of the Ohio primary - that Austin Goolsbee, Obama’s top economic policy adviser, had told Canadian officials that Obama’s public pledge to force a renegotiation of Nafta was not sincere, and was “more about political positioning.” Cue Ohio, which has suffered huge manufacturing job losses, voting overwhelmingly for Clinton.
Then Obama’s foreign policy advisor, the usually eloquent and impressive Samantha Power (who seems to have never been able to escape a profile without being described as flame-haired), had a rather unsisterly outburst in an interview with The Scotsman:
“We f***** up in Ohio,” she admitted. “In Ohio, they are obsessed and Hillary is going to town on it, because she knows Ohio’s the only place they can win.
“She is a monster, too – that is off the record – she is stooping to anything,”
“You just look at her and think, ‘Ergh’… The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive.”
One of the much-touted qualities of Obama’s brand was that it drew together a broad church. Now, though, with a pastor with alleged links to an ‘Islamo-facism’, an economic advisor who may well have cost him a swing state, and a diplomacy advisor who has been anything but diplomatic, it is all starting to come apart at the seams.
In the Scotsman interview, Power said: “Here, it looks like desperation. I hope it looks like desperation there, too.” She was, for the record, referring to the Clinton campaign.
Like Casablanca’s Inspector Renault, we are ” shocked to find there has been gambling going on in this casino “. You forgot to mention the perennial dodgy estate agent moment ?
I feel zonked just reading about the US election. The itinerant gladiators must be feeling pretty tired and emotional by now …
( How McCain has avoided having his first coronary is anybody’s guess - his poor wife looks as though she has already had one )
I agree with Samantha Powers ( btw, so what if her impressive hair gets a worthy mention ? It may even be relevant reportage where the profession has long enjoyed the subriquet ” politics is show business for ugly people” ) and wonder if one of the less advertised reasons the increasingly pompous Hillary is prepared to divide the party, rather than concede defeat, is because she herself is now locked in an unsisterly cat fight with our far more sincere Oprah
If Obama can be wrong footed by a leak from a friendly country like Canada, imagine how much fun he will have with Iran. He needs to show he can fight a little dirty if necessary to convince the sceptics he is more than a good speechmaker. These battles may do him some good in the long run if he is seen to be fully tested by the time of the general election.
Sad, sad. Never thought the Democratic primaries would become a remake of “Desperate Housewives.”