The cluelessness of Obama campaign staff

Hey, if I can write about the cluelessness of Nancy Pelosi, maybe I ought to just make “political cluelessness” in general a blog theme. (Send me tips and URLs to Socratic Gadfly.)

Obama has two staffers who get the dunce cap.

First, top Obama foreign policy advisor Susan Rice says of both Hillary Clinton AND her own boss that “they’re not ready” in terms of foreign policy experience.

Shooting your own self in the foot is bad enough; shooting your boss in the foot, and not in a backgrounder, but in an interview, is pretty effing stupid.

Second, Obama foreign policy aide Samantha Power tried an ex post facto comment retraction of a comment about Hillary Clinton:

“She is a monster, too – that is off the record – she is stooping to anything.”

And, a personal aside. I’ve been the journalist on the receiving end of just a gaffe myself, when a school district superintendent called the federal Title I program a “candy store” in the middle of a school board meeting, then tried to retract it.

Now, lemme see on the fallout. Tweety Chris Matthews will probably go into misogynist mode with both snafus being about women. Maureen Dowd will probably figure out a new spin on “shoulder-pad feminism” or worse, while more serious analysts will wonder if Power didn’t just prove Rice right.

Update: Power has resigned.

Futher tidbit: Here’s Josh Marshall’s take on the Power resignation and how it shows Clinton is inside Obama’s head right now:

Obama folks can either withdraw to a world where the “new politics” reigns or focus on the fact that here in the real world there are two “old politics” practitioners standing between him and the presidency and he needs to decide how he's going to deal with that fact..

I agree; what else is there to say?

Update: Earlier, on Power, I had raised the idea of an arrogance meme. I am corrected on this; the interview with the Scotsman was not an official campaign interview, but rather part of her book tour for her new biography of the late UN official Sergio Vieira de Mello.