Journalists like to make fun of the Hollywood Foreign Press (I've done it, I admit), that handful of perk-hungry foreign reporters who decide the Golden Globe winners. They put on a good show but do they really affect the real voting? The Oscar voting?
Well the political foreign press is showing they indeed have clout. You know it's truly an international Presidential Election when a high-level campaign aide has to resign over comments printed in a foreign newspaper.
Obama foreign policy adviser Samantha Power exited the campaign today after The Scotsman printed a story in which she called Hillary Clinton "a monster." The story by Gerri Peev titled “‘Hillary Clinton's a monster’: Obama aide blurts out attack in Scotsman interview” quotes Power as saying: “She is a monster, too , that is off the record , she is stooping to anything,” The comment, says the article, is proof of the Obama camp's true feelings about Clinton. (A debatable claim, even in light of some of the other things Power said to the reporter, like "You just look at her and think, ‘Ergh’. But if you are poor and she is telling you some story about how Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it will be more effective. The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive.")
The story might also offer Americans a glimpse of some of the hard-nosed coverage that's happening in the international press. Maybe it will drive some traffic to the online editions of their campaign coverage which, contrary to a lot of stateside reports, isn't just fawning. While an American reporter might not have printed Power's comment, honoring her "that is off the record" statement, Peev simply sums that up as Power "hastily trying to withdraw her remark."
This type of reporting could influence November's results.