Politico: Samantha Powers Re-Joins Obama [View All]

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Samantha Power re-joins Obama

By POLITICO STAFF

Samantha Power, the foreign-policy scholar who was banished from the Obama campaign for referring to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) as a "monster" during the Democratic primaries, is working on President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team studying State Department personnel, operations and policy.

That’s potentially a little awkward because Clinton is scheduled to be designated Obama’s secretary of state early next week.

When Power resigned March 7 as a senior foreign policy adviser to the campaign, she said in a statement: “I made inexcusable remarks that are at marked variance from my oft-stated admiration for Senator Clinton and from the spirit, tenor, and purpose of the Obama campaign.”

Power, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her 2003 book “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,” had been quoted by the newspaper The Scotsman as saying Clinton "is a monster, too — that is off the record — she is stooping to anything.”

Power was close to Obama personally, so her return is not particularly surprising. Many of her friends thought it was a case of “when,” not “if.”

Power is a professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. She was mentioned early on as a possibility for an administration appointment, but is not among the leading candidates for the top jobs.

More: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/16046.html