Samantha Power

“I BELIEVE IN OVERSHARING,” SAYS SAMANTHA Power. She’s not kidding. Her answer to the journalistic equivalent of a warm-up pitch—So how’s teaching going?—is 16 minutes long and touches her views on geopolitics, Ebola, diplomacy, Facebook, President Trump, President Obama, U.S. leadership, the importance of expertise, disillusionment and optimism in the Harvard student body, the U.N., human rights, climate change, China, Bosnia, political prisoners and being Irish.

Perhaps noticing the mild panic in my eyes as my brain tries to process even half of it, she checks herself. “Sorry,” she says. “I’m going to get more succinct with the passage of time.” This was to be the only verifiable falsehood of the whole day.

Power, for those who’ve forgotten, was the human-rights shield-maiden who served in the Obama Administration, first as Also because she was memorably fired from then Senator Obama’s presidential campaign when she called Hillary Clinton “a monster” in front of a reporter.