By Lionel Beehner
Thank God Samantha Power has resigned from the Obama campaign. Her style of honest, brash, off-the-cuff statement-making has no place in presidential politics. Political operatives should not say anything other than the talking points handed down from the campaigns' higher-ups. That is what we the viewers and voters want--not unscripted asides of honesty and humanness, certainly not what one of Obama's chief advisors thinks about Ohio. Voters seek canned statements and platitudes like Hillary's "fool-me-once-shame-on-me" line, not outside-of-the-box thinking from Harvard folks like Power. Why? Because these statements have been vetted, battle-tested, and shoved through a focus-group blender and thus must convey to voters like me what the candidates really think.

In an ideal world, advisers and flacks would just read press
releases on the air but unfortunately television networks feel they
need to mask their operations as news-gathering. Whatever. Thankfully,
America is nearing a state of moral bliss when every pundit,
politician, and political operative is so straight-jacketed, so guarded
against gotcha-journalists with Scottish accents, that nobody would
dare use offensive, incendiary terms like "pimping" or "monster" ever
again. Phew! American voters are not stupid--naïve, easily offended,
yes--but they realize when they are being sold something that is honest
and unscripted (Wait, did I just call Americans naïve? Is that
offensive?? Should I resign??? Shit!! Wait, was that offensive, too????)

Note to presidential advisors: Please tell it from the memo, not from the heart. We Americans are too frail and easily offended to handle unscripted, candid comments.