McCain Personnel Memo: Avoid Not-So-Smart FP Advisors

John McCain's ramping up his political organization in the wake of President Bush's endorsement Wednesday.

So here's a tip for the McCain campaign's director of personnel: Avoid not-so-smart foreign policy adivisors.

It turns out that Samantha Power, a left-wing international relations big-shot at Harvard University, and the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Problem From Hell, has just submitted her resignation as foreign policy advisor to the Barack Obama campaign after she called Hillary Clinton a "monster."

The Associated Press has a short take:

A Barack Obama adviser has resigned after calling rival Hillary Rodham Clinton "a monster."

A campaign official told The Associated Press Friday that Samantha Power's resignation is effective immediately.

Power told The Scotsman that Clinton is a "monster" who will stoop to anything to win. She tried to make the remark off the record, but the Scottish newspaper printed it anyway. She apologized in a statement and the campaign decried the remark.

Power is a foreign policy adviser to Obama and a Pulitzer Prize winner.

Power's a big advocate of humanitarian intervention - she's apparently known as "the genocide chick" - but she might do well to audit some of the political communications seminars offered at her own public policy institute, JFK School of Government.

This is a colossal mistake. Power was positioning herself for a major post in an Obama administration, perhaps Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights.

Apparenty, Power likes to play basketball, to which George Clooney - a comrade-in-arms - is said to have remarked, "She's the best I've ever played against."

Here's Frank James on Clooney's endorsement:

With all due respect to Clooney and his assessment of her basketball skills, we'll have to see her crossover move before we can determine if she's really got game. It's fair to say, however, when it comes to her political footwork, she needs more practice.

See more analysis at Memeorandum; and CNN, "Obama Adviser Resigns Over Comment."