Samantha power first of all how did you get to the states . My mother a rambunctious irish doctor, athlete, humanist decided to get on the plane and run with the man she loved who was my father and they moved in 1979. The term under which he came here was that i would be raised a good Irish Catholic and can we would go back for all of our holidays a week i could be with my dad. I would not have known she would not have known that we were immigrating to this country but thats what turned out to be. Host wasnt all that simple though was the . Guest not as simple as you wish it were but it wasnt simple. I was a kid and i moved to pittsburgh the year the Pittsburgh Pirates won the world series. Everything was big and loud and there was an abundance of sugared cereals. What more could i have wanted and of course the road that i have taken since then is a reflection of what is unique still to this day about this country, the immigrant story and how you can end up going from being a little kid with Big League Chew in her mouth trying to fit in as an immigrant who represent narration at the u. N. Host before leaving ireland was your father story . Guess who he was a big drinker which was one of the reasons she separated from men ultimately left him and after we left he stayed behind and he drank more and more. My brother would be his reason for getting out bed in the morning. He he died when i was 14 years old very suddenly. We have moved to Atlanta Georgia and it was devastating and he was very much alone. He said thats what im interested in human rights and Human Dignity that im trying to recover and theres probably some truth to that of regardless it was a big low and many made me favor the time i had with my family. You would think a big rupture like that in a couple of ways and for me it was wow am in my lucky to still have my mother and im somewhat you to be here and so grateful but obviously especially when i was in the rose garden getting nominated by president obama years later i wish my dad were around to see it. Host how did you get to know president obama . Overset path from ireland to u. N. Ambassador . Guest the first break in my live is coming to this country in the second was i went from a Public High School in Atlanta Georgia to going to Yale University and from there it was extremely moved by the war in bosnia and the atrocities happening there and men being imprisoned in concentration camps 50 years after the holocaust. Holocaust. I had read anne frank and i thought it meant something then i went off to bosnia to become a freelance Foreign Correspondent which again in those respective my kids tried to do that i would prevent it but my mother somehow put her own fears for my safety aside enabled it. She got me on the plane and from there covered that war for nearly three years as a journalist ultimately writing for the economist and the Washington Post making publication. All i saw around me were american likes flying overhead and people continued to be targeted because they were muslim or whatever. I kind of left journalism thinking i want to be in a position where im reading somebodys dispatches from an environment like this one and i went to law school. When you dont know exactly what you want to do with your life as one does while i was there i wanted to put into context the experience i had in bosnia. For a class in law school i began this question of why we say never again to get lost me and rawanda happened and how we notice when genocide is coming our way that we dont keep our promise to ourselves. From this book a problem from despite having a rocky beginning host was a rejected . Guest it was dark and it was long. I was an unknown opposition and it was rejected by dozens of publishing houses. And then amazing contingencies of author and the book. A Jewish American who wanted to stand never again as it relates to contemporary genocide armenian americans who felt as a nonarmenian i was documenting the armenian and Muslim Americans looking at what has happened to bosnia and all the jewish groups and muslims coming together in a really interesting way which we havent seen in a while. These days a the constituency has a different kind of foreign policy. The book had a much larger life out and send the publisher i had ever dreamed of one of the readers was a firstterm senator barack obama. He read it not in its narrow form but more about foreignpolicy and why in the wait for example than that they are back or wide are we systematically inclined to exclude consideration of human consequences and the highest level of decisionmaking and how can we do it differently . He was the 99th member of the senate, freshman senator from alumni. At that time there was a lot of oversight so he wasnt in an empowered role which is one reason i believe he tried to run for president but he was frustrated that he knew he wanted to get the thinking down and develop kind of a blueprint for if democrats were in charge again or he can somehow were in office he would very quickly acquire. I left harvard for his teaching. They worked in the Senate Office and he tried to think through what he would do differently have the chance and on the whole out of that sense of the limits of what he could do at the center he decided to run for president could i join the campaign and i tell that story in the book as well being in the senate and on the campaign. I ended up leaving the campaign because i got into trouble on the campaign rightly so. Host you spoke out and said something about mrs. Clinton. Guest i did Say Something about now secretary clinton, senator clinton at the time and i had to resign the campaign ended up coming back to the campaign. I had the experience of feeling like i was flying close to the sun and then melting down basically in the public eye which was a new experience. I got a chance to work very closely with secretary clinton when the lure and the Obama Administration. And then the Obama Administration alongside for those years my husband who i met on the obamacare. He was in charge of regulation for obama so we had the experience of driving to work every day and sharing our frustrations and he has served in government before but trying to figure out how to make the system work. We were kind of academics in the roughandtumble political world host is the u. N. Ambassadorship the right place for an idealist . It was a great place for me i can tell you. It was a place we could purvey confront aggression that visible and vocal way. Other jobs are more behindthescenes. When russia invaded ukraine or when russia began bombarding the a ton of aleppo in syria created omens where the Security Council itself had a veto from the founding of the u. N. You could create some form of accountability by being a truth teller and you can negotiate behindthescenes even with those you want to strangle. I tell the story in the book i was extremely close with the russians ambassador who i was having public confrontations with but working to fight isis and to cut off their financial which was a big part of rolling back their gains. For me it was exactly the right venue to combine Public Diplomacy and private relentlessness on behalf of u. S. Interests. I also have a chance but because of the most powerful country in the world to make sure that we were treating countries and away that signaled that we respected the dignity of individuals who representative them. For example it was the first of the nasiter who visited every country that has a mission to the u. N. Other than north korea with whom we dont have diplomatic relations. By virtue of doing that i believe ive gained a huge amount of support from those ambassadors just like showing respect by again seeing their individual work as well as a respect for the country. Came time to deliver tough votes against russia on ukraine or rights which are still not enjoyed by the majority people who live on the planet those ambassadors were my allies. They were fighting on behalf of the goals that we had and thats the emphasis on soft power. Playing soccer with the latin American Ambassador having the women ambassadors over for dinner taking them up to broadway show and seeing them in hearing their interests and their values i made that go a million miles and reaping benefits for the states. Host ambassador power one of those trips ended in tragedy. A motorcade. Guest devastating. That was the lowest of my professional career. We were very moved by all the parents who lost children to boko haram coming into the villages and literally a ducting girls and the boys that they would turn into 7yearold fighters, suicide armors. We went because we felt the world was neglecting this crisis with everything going on with isis and russia. We bought 50 million in famine relief and the promise of higher level u. S. Engagement intelligence sharing so we could find some of those children and just out of the gates in the country of cameroon our convoy which was going to the boko haram area the rose had all been sealed off. Nobody was permitted and people were permitted to cross the road for security reasons. A little boy we dont really know one of the helicopters who was flying overhead to provide convoys for vehicles maybe wasnt looking, to this day we dont know but he was struck by one of the vehicles in the convoy who i didnt even know the accident happen until we were added later site. Subsequently we have learned that the boy had died so does the irony of ironies you go to help the children in cameroon and chad and nigeria niger and had we not come there the way would still be playing with his siblings. It was devastating and there was nothing we could do in the wake of Something Like that other than show your sorrow and respect for the family. Host you return. Guest i went back that day to see the family and i just looked them in the eyes and tried to somehow express the remorse that i felt and my own son that had a birthday coming up a couple of days later and you just think this family is not going to enjoy a celebration it was devastating that i reflected the book on also what it means in the larger level. So many people especially these days trump with his rhetoric. Theres an idea of even when america goes to try to help this is the kind of thing that happens. When it did happen and theres no denying it happened, the good that the United States did even on trip like that, the number of children like that will lay dying of malnutrition and he apprehended by the au courant, u. S. Diplomats and aid workers and soldiers every day for a just and the common good is hard to find words but i spent the last couple of years trying to find words to convey to the readers who have lost a lot of hope and trust in our government and our country. I think that hope in that trust is well placed in most cases. The road to hell is paved with Good Intention but to turn away from the harder homes in the world makes us feel its a very bad place. Host what do you think is your biggest frustration of your eight years as an ambassador . Guest the biggest source of heartbreak is scary and i suppose its the place where the contrast between what ive written and argued before and what would enable to achieve for serious most evident. I tell the story in the book of multiple calls. I heard from everyone from john mccain from the Editorial Board for me to resign over the fact that as it were her id written a book on americas responsibilities and here we were 500,000 people killed, torture chambers, gas chambers, gas attacks. It was a howto manual of photography written with their regime behind it. Its still something that keeps me up at night and no responsibility to do anything but secondguessing if we had done this or that would have been different . I think the balance of what we are able to achieve whether on climate and walked back of course by the Trump Administration to prevent a worse iran which the administration is also trying to walk back, the lives saved across Subsaharan Africa because of their engagement, you know serious stands out as a real source of heartbreak and regret and theres an awful lot alongside that i hope makes it clear to readers why even though syria called for my resignation, i never seriously considered giving up and there were a lot of places in the world where we were able to make a big difference. Lets go ambassador power or you still an idealist and have you been educated . Guest ive been educated on how to put my ideals into practice more effectively. Im definitely educated and of course there are dimensions to how you get things done but i have a whole new window into it that i have put on a page in story form to try to make it funny and too opened up this. I dont see my journey at all of oneness idea lum lessened by reality. If anything i feel more empowered at the knowledge that ive acquired in different walks whether its a journalist in the Senate Campaign and the white house says a u. N. Ambassador but theres always something we can do and the state of the world right now we could feel very bleak. I think its a call to idealism. If youre not in idealist now are you prepared to accept the world as it is . Im certainly not pretty that i think we can do a l