Satisfying long read for New Years Day. Twelve and a half thousand words. Evan Osmos is a China expert (Im listening to his interview with Charlie Rose as I write) but this portrait of Samantha Power is as much fun to read as tripping across his endless minutiae. This is neither a hit piece nor a play for sympathy (either of which would write themselves for this subject). I learned a lot reading this article. Here are a couple of snips that I particularly enjoyed. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >> The culture of the United Nations is deferential, noncommittal, and risk-averse. A Secretary-General in the eighties, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, was said to be so mild that he could fall out of a boat and not make a splash. When Power arrived, it wasn’t clear how she would approach that environment. “Seldom have I seen a colleague with such an appropriate last name,” Karel van Oosterom, the Dutch Ambassador, told me. “In Dutch, we have a strange expression, ‘She doesn’t speak with flour in her mouth.’ She can be very clear, and she can also maintain perspective.” > In January, 2008, while campaigning for Obama in Iowa, Power started dating [OIRA Administrator Cass] Sunstein. He and Obama had been friends since their days teaching at the University of Chicago. Sunstein, who was serving as an informal legal adviser to the campaign, was ranked as the most frequently cited legal scholar in America. “He had written so much that I thought he was probably as old as Oliver Wendell Holmes,” Power said. (He is sixteen years older than Power; he was divorced and had split up with his companion of more than a decade, the University of Chicago professor Martha Nussbaum.) On an early date, Power answered a call from [Richard] Holbrooke, who asked to speak to Sunstein. Holbrooke greeted him cheerfully and said, on behalf of himself and Abramowitz, “If you hurt her, Mort and I will break your kneecaps.” Power and Sunstein married on July 4th, in County Kerry, in a boisterous three-day affair. At one point, boat captains urged Power to cancel a scheduled ride because of rough seas; Power went ahead, and regretted subjecting her guests to it. “Several puked over the side,” she said. In a toast, the commentator Jeff Greenfield hailed the wedding as “a cross between ‘The Poseidon Adventure’ and the Bataan death march.”
Posted on: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 19:32:46 +0000
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