Not that long ago Samantha Power was trudging through the winter wastes of New Hampshire with Bill Clinton’s former national security adviser, Anthony Lake, canvassing door- to-door and phoning potential supporters in what she calls a “very mom-and-poppy operation”. “Almost by definition there was a sort of expectation that he was going to lose,” she says of Barack Obama, whom this Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard professor advises on foreign policy. “Going into Iowa he was down 25 points. So anybody who joined his team was, for the most part, prepared to lose for something, or someone, they believed in.”
A group of idealists battling through New England blizzards in support of an inspirational but surely doomed candidate: it sounds like Josh, Leo and Toby doing their best for Jed Bartlet in The West Wing, which is where Bartlet, of course, ends up. “We’re not there yet, baby,” laughs Power. “It’s pretty unglamorous, all cheeseburgers and Cheetos so far.”
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