Samantha Power: Can Obama's UN nominee live down Israel comments?

Samantha Power has the kind of credentials and contacts that spark envy among Washington peers. She’s a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, confidant to President Obama, and a well-known global human rights crusader. Ms. Power is also married to Cass Sunstein, the president’s former White House regulations czar, making her one half of a legal power couple.

But the Harvard Law graduate, nominated by Mr. Obama yesterday to be the next UN ambassador, is about to experience the greatest initiation of all into capital city culture – the congressional confirmation process. And given the coverage spawned by the Rose Garden announcement of Power’s appointment, it could be a doozy.

Conservative headlines and blogs are blaring Power’s biggest verbal gaffes and political missteps:

“Samantha Power’s Five Worst Statements,” crows The Washington Free Beacon, a right-wing website.

On Townhall.com: “A Look at Obama's New UN Ambassador: Radical Samantha Power.”

“Samantha Power’s promotion to U.N. ambassador is a major disappointment,” writes Richard Grenell on Foxnews.com.

“In a position of power and proximity to the president of the United States, from which she could meaningfully act against any unfolding injustice, Power was largely silent and completely ineffective,” Mr. Grenell, a former spokesman for Bush-era UN Ambassador John Bolton, among others, says of Power’s White House work on the human-rights crisis in Sudan. “The NGO community was left wondering which Samantha Power was getting to speak inside the Oval Office.”

During the confirmation process, Republicans are gunning these days for anyone whose weaknesses can be targeted in an attempt to, by extension, knock an already beleaguered White House.

Former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel took a beating from his former Republican colleagues during his hearings to become Obama’s secretary of Defense. Mr. Hagel was, of course, ultimately successful, but he appeared weary and beaten down by the end of the process.

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