The heightened enmity between the Clinton and Obama camps has now taken a toll: Samantha Power, one of Obama’s key foreign policy advisors, has stepped aside. She resigned in the wake of the following comments about Sen. Hillary Clinton, which she attempted to make off-the-record in an interview with the Scottish newspaper The Scotsman.

“She is a monster, too – that is off the record – she is stooping to anything,” Ms. Power told the paper. Unfortunately for Ms. Power, you don’t really get to declare “that is off the record” after you complete a potentially explosive assessment of your candidate’s opponent in an American presidential primary. You need to take care to arrange such niceties beforehand. She went on to say:

“Here, it looks like desperation. I hope it looks like desperation there, too.

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.”

Her apologetic resignation ran as follows: “Last Monday, I made inexcusable remarks that are at marked variance from my oft-stated admiration for Senator Clinton and from the spirit, tenor, and purpose of the Obama campaign,” she said. “And I extend my deepest apologies to Senator Clinton, Senator Obama and the remarkable team I have worked with over these long 14 months.”

Power is a brilliant academic (Harvard, with public policy and the practice of global leadership her areas of expertise). She spoke with the paper to hawk her latest book, not to speak on behalf of Obama. Still, she knew the terrain. She openly expressed some time ago her frank understanding that working for Obama would require her to curb her sense of “frustration” with his opponents due to what he stood for in terms of the behavior and ethics of campaigning.

She fell far short of his standard in this interview, certainly. The stress of losses in Ohio, Rhode Island, and Texas may be showing. Resentment at having American media begin a more aggressive assessment of Obama may also be showing. But he had been frontrunner, with amazing momentum. Even now, he’s ahead in delegates awarded in Texas due to the prima-caucus split system there, and far ahead overall in terms of pledged delegates.

In the finest presidential tradition, Barack Obama has pulled a lot of thoughtful academics onto his team to advise on policy matters. But first Austan Goolsbee had the NAFTA chat with Canada that was publicized to killing effect in Ohio, and now Power has imploded in the days before Wyoming and Mississippi vote, with Pennsylvania just six weeks away.

Of the Ohio loss, The Scotsman reported Power said the following: We f***** up in Ohio,” she admitted. “In Ohio, they are obsessed and Hillary is going to town on it, because she knows Ohio’s the only place they can win.”

But Ohio wasn’t the only place they could win. And one is hard-pressed to believe Ms. Power’s after-the-fact contention that she is an admirer of Hillary Clinton on any level. So why pretend, when it only serves to make your “change candidate” look like just another dissembling politician out of Washington? It all leaves one to wonder whether the Obama team has the emotional stamina and intellectual discipline to fight on and close the sale with Democrats.