To the Editor:
Seth Mandel wrote a commendable article about the hypocrisy of Samantha Power (“The Cautionary Tale of Samantha Power,” February). Hers is among the most blatant and tragic cases of professional cowardice on record.
I couldn’t help noticing, however, that if her story is in fact a “cautionary tale” then those who most need to absorb its lessons are already rejecting them. I refer here to Trump-era Republicans. Much like Ambassador Power did during the Obama years, Republican leaders are now enabling and supporting policies that go directly against their previously stated positions: protectionism, infrastructure spending, a warming of relations with Russia, and so on. And much like her, they’re doing so to stay in the employ of the party in power. Surely, the hypocrisy of one woman pales in comparison to the hypocrisy of a whole political party.
Risa Arnold
Lindale, Texas
Seth Mandel writes:
I thank Risa Arnold for her kind words and sympathize with her concerns over Republican hypocrisy. But there are two important distinctions to be made here. The first is that not as many Republicans have changed positions as we might think: The party’s rank-and-file has long been split on free trade and infrastructure spending, for example. According to Gallup, the percentage of Republicans who see trade more as an opportunity than a threat declined a mere one point, to 50, since Donald Trump began his presidential campaign in 2015. Yet in 2012, that number was 41. In 2008, it was 46. In 2013, Gallup found that 63 percent of Republicans supported increased federal spending to repair American infrastructure. One reason Trump won the GOP presidential nomination was that he understood the extent of Republicans’ ideological heterodoxy.
Second, those Republicans who have flip-flopped on principles are not taking Cabinet-level jobs in the Trump administration to carry out and direct the very policies they have spent their careers fighting to eradicate. The same cannot be said for Samantha Power, who dedicated her life to naming and shaming government officials who were in a position to save lives and did nothing while refusing to quit in protest. She then became exactly that. Power’s hypocrisy is in a league all its own.
