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Power down

James Forsyth

Friday, 7th March 2008

Partly out of necessity, partly out of choice Barack Obama has reached beyond the usual circle of Washington wonks to staff up his policy shop. But in the last week, two of his smartest advisors have got him into trouble and one of them has had to step down.

First of all there was theflap over Austan Goolsbee, a brilliant U Chicago economist who is one of Obama’s top domestic policy advisors, telling the Canadians that Obama’s criticisms of Nafta were more an expression of politic than policy. Now, Samantha Power, one of the sharpest foreign policy thinkers out there, has had to resign for calling Hillary “a monster.”

Personally, I suspect her resignation has as much to do with Power’s honest confession in a BBC interview that when it comes to Iraq Obama "will, of course, not rely on some plan that he’s crafted as a presidential candidate or a U.S. Senator" as the monster comment. Power used to work in Obama’s Senate office and is at the heart of his campaign—the last time I saw her she was at the heart of celebrations at a bar in Des Moines after Obama’s crucial win in the Iowa caucuses—and I doubt she would have been thrown over board just for the monster comment. But the Iraq one is actually far more serious, as it reveals that all Obama’s talk of bringing all the troops home within 16 months is just meaningless politician talk.