Samantha Power’s new book, The Education of an Idealist, has me thinking about the difference between what might be called “deserving to be successful” and actually being successful.

By any conventional measure, Power deserved to be successful in her role as UN Ambassador. She had the best humanitarian intentions—indeed, her commitment to human rights is relentless and without pause. She is hardworking, well informed and smart. Her notion of a “tool kit” of strategies and responses for dealing with humanitarian crises (so we can match the appropriate tool to the specific facts) is beyond wise.

But even in regard to outcomes she herself privileges, she is generally ineffectual. So, much of the book (re)defines what making a difference means in ever more modest and humble terms. Her UN work is increasingly focused on the value of relationships and good processes—her amazing effort to personally meet each of the delegations at the UN.

Power’s—let’s call it what it is—undeserved failure(s) are, I think, neither rare or even unusual.

Indeed, Power’s book, has me thinking about how many decent and good people are not succeeding in the works and lives of the Lab. A refugee high school student who still isn’t being taught to read after four years in the district and despite all the good intentions in the world.

There are hundreds of—to borrow Power’s own phrase—“problems from hell” if by that term we mean challenges that are devastating in their impact and unfixable. These problems, by their nature, resist rationality and are resolutely unaffected by good intentions and merit. That, of course, is why they are from hell and not from a quiet, well-ordered conference room.

What is likely required, then, is probably not more thoughtfulness and right thinking, but something like the opposite. Say… unreconstructed outrage, instinctual action, and even heavenly grace.

--Bill Tobin