Samantha Power: evaluation

Transcript context

…If I think about Richard Holbrooke — he was one of the diplomats who helped broker a peace solution in former Yugoslavia. If I read your edited volume on Holbrooke, he sounds so sane and rational. If I read the new George Packer biography of Holbrooke, he sounds somewhat crazy and maybe a womanizer or obnoxious or a fair amount of disregard for protocol. How should I square these pictures? What’s the actual truth about Richard Holbrooke? It would be unusual for any individual in a self-portrait to depict themself as a womanizing crazy person, for starters. But George’s book also depicts a person who aligns with the Holbrooke that we know from Holbrooke’s own portrayal, namely somebody super energetic and creative and working all sources of leverage. He was a complex individual who was sort of both and everything. I was very lucky to have been mentored by him. That’s a story I told in the edited Holbrooke volume that isn’t as salient, I think, in Packer’s account. It’s very wonderful, but also quite unusual for an established diplomat, whether one who is self-involved and egotistical and/or one who is super talented and creative. Holbrooke was both of those things. For anyone in those categories to spend the time that Holbrooke spent cultivating young diplomats, I think that speaks to a depth of character and a deep reverence for the United States, a kind of patriotism, because he saw it wasn’t like, “Let me have my refracted glory,” or “Let all of these minions go forth in the world and they’ll be mini Holbrookes going around. ” I think he really thought it was incumbent on him to groom the next generation of diplomats to go forth on behalf of US interests. So I think any black-and-white portrait of someone with that range of qualities would be flawed. I think George does an excellent job capturing the yin and the yang. You migrated to the United States from Ireland at the age of nine. When you first arrived here, what was your biggest surprise?…

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