KEY POINTS:
Until yesterday, young Harvard professor Samantha Power was destined to play a leading role in Barack Obama's new foreign policy team.
Not quite experienced enough to be Secretary of State or National Security Adviser, she was marked for prominence should Obama make it to the White House.
Yesterday, those dreams were in tatters after she described Hillary Clinton as a power-hungry "monster" and was instantly forced to resign.
"She is a monster, too - that is off the record - she is stooping to anything," Power said in an interview which took place in London last Monday but was only published in The Scotsman later that week.
"You just look at her and think, 'ergh'," Powers continued. "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."
There was an instant and predictable furore in the US, putting the Obama campaign on the defensive, making it look amateurish at the worst possible moment.
The sky appeared to be the limit for the 37-year-old, Irish-born academic who was head-hunted by Obama to be a senior foreign policy adviser after he read her Pulitzer-prize winning book, America and the Age of Genocide. She has helped guide his foreign policy which advocates tough responses to humanitarian crises such as Darfur as well as military strikes on known terrorist groups, but also an engagement with the world that has been largely absent from the Bush administration's foreign policy.
In retrospect, Power's inexperience as a foreign policy practitioner made her an accident waiting to happen.
With an earthy turn of phrase, the 37-year old's remark in the interview that the Obama campaign "f...ed up in Ohio" - where Clinton won by 10 percentage points last Tuesday - jarred American sensibilities.
After his defeat to Clinton in Iowa and Texas last week, Obama has been trying to figure out how to land a punch on his opponent without abandoning his pledge to be above negative, mud-slinging politics. Power's disparaging remarks about his opponent were completely off message and played straight into Clinton's hands.
As ferocious as the attacks from the Clinton camp on Obama have been, no one in her entourage has ever attacked him in such a personal and disparaging way.
As the story grew and threatened to dominate the news cycle on the eve of the Wyoming primary, Power was forced out.
Within hours of the interview being published, and then publicised by The Drudge Report, the Obama campaign was denouncing her remarks.
A contrite Power said, "It is wrong for anyone to pursue this campaign in such negative and personal terms.
"I apologise to Senator Clinton and to Senator Obama, who has made very clear that these kinds of expressions should have no place in American politics."
- THE INDEPENDENT
