Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Samantha Power, Sometimes Blunt, May Face Confirmation Battle for U.N. Job

President Barack Obama has selected as his nominee for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and academic who in 2008 called Hillary Clinton – at the time a political rival of Obama – “a monster.”

The White House is due to name Samantha Power to replace current ambassador Susan Rice, who Obama plans to nominate on Wednesday as his national security adviser.

Power, a former White House aide and Harvard professor, is a strong advocate for human rights at a time when the Obama administration is grappling with its response to the civil war in Syria as well as human rights issues in countries such as China and Sudan.

Power caused a stir during the tense contest between Obama and Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 2008 election. She was serving as an adviser to Obama at the time.

“She is a monster, too – that is off the record – she is stooping to anything,” Power was quoted as telling The Scotsman, a British newspaper, referring to Clinton.

“But if you are poor and she is telling you some story about how Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it will be more effective. The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive,” Power was quoted as saying.

The remarks prompted her resignation from Obama’s campaign team. Obama edged Clinton for the Democratic nomination, won election that November and named Clinton as his top diplomat, a post she held until earlier this year.

The “monster” comment illustrates the close scrutiny that Power’s discretion and diplomatic skill will face as the U.S. envoy to the world’s leading diplomatic body. It also underscores the power of words for an accomplished former writer who has made other offhand comments likely to draw a second look from critics.

Republicans in the Senate, which must approve her nomination, are likely to give her a rough confirmation hearing.

If confirmed, Power’s return to government service would be a comeback after having left the White House earlier this year as senior director for multilateral affairs and human rights on the national security staff.

While that job was relatively low profile, Power was widely reported to have argued for the U.S. decision to intervene militarily in 2011 to support the rebels who eventually toppled long-time Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

No stranger to the power of words, her earlier work as a journalist sent her covering the Balkan wars of the 1990s and conflicts in other countries such as Rwanda, according to her biography on the White House website.

She later won the Pulitzer Prize for her book “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,” a study of U.S. policy responses to genocide during the 20th century.

Power is married to legal scholar Cass Sunstein, who until last year headed the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. He was a friend of Obama dating back to their days on the University of Chicago Law School faculty.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.