COLIN POWELL: AN AMERICAN HISTORIC ANOMALY

This week’s death of former State Secretary and retired four-star general Colin Powell marks a reflection time for America. Powell died October 18 from complications of COVID-19.  Cancer exacerbated his condition.  He was 84. We regard Powell as a complex figure on the American political scene, but let no one doubt his historical significance to the nation. 

Powell was the New York-born child of Jamaican

immigrants. He rose to the top of the U.S.  military. He served in significant political and diplomatic positions.  We suspect history will regard him as one of the most accomplished and important Americans of his time.

         

A Fistful of Firsts

Some will remember Powell as a black man who checked off a long list of firsts:

· First black National Security Advisor to a President of the United States. Ronald Reagan named Powell, then a three-star general, his national security advisor on November 5, 1987.  The famously conservative Reagan wasn’t known for appointing people of African descent to high office, but Powell became a trusted advisor.

·  First black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  Powell ascended to that job as the nation’s top military officer after being nominated by President George H.W. Bush (41) and confirmed by the Congress. Powell was one of the architects of the quick American victory in Operation Desert Storm, the televised war that demonstrated the technological superiority of the U.S. military.

· First black Secretary of State.  President George W. Bush (43) made Powell thecountry’s top diplomat. He served with distinction, except for one major blemish, his support for the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. He was allegedly  duped by others in the Bush administration into believing Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Powell subsequently took responsibility for his action. It’s commonly believed he accepted the story Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and others peddled because Colin Powell was, first and foremost, a soldier who followed orders and carried out the plans of his superiors.   

                       

A Man of Courage

Powell served in combat. In his memoir, My

American Journey, he wrote extensively of coming under fire and being injured while on duty in Vietnam. His experience there encouraged him to formulate the so-called Powell Doctrine – the idea that the United States should get involved in foreign wars only after reaching a political consensus about its objectives and amassing whatever force it needed to achieve those objectives. Arguably, that’s what the U.S. did in Desert Storm. Maybe it’s what we didn’t do in Afghanistan.

Whatever battlefield courage Powell demonstrated in Vietnam, he sometimes eclipsed it in the political arena. Take for example his speech at the 2000 Republican convention when he defended affirmative action in college admissions before an audience notoriously hostile to that idea. Supporting affirmative action before progressive Democrats and civil rights activists is one thing. Doing so before a hall full of Republicans is another.

Then there were his presidential endorsements in 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020. Despite being a Republican and serving in a Republican administration, Powell endorsed Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden in those elections. He got plenty of blowback for those endorsements, but he stood by them. He said he believed the candidates he backed would better serve the national interest.

Seeping into the Culture

Colin Powell wasn’t just a military, political, and diplomatic figure. He came to stand for the respected man the country and its political class

could trust. He even became a model in the literary world.  The Race is a political novel by acclaimed writer Richard North Patterson. Mostly, the story concerns a fictional Desert Storm hero turned United States Senator who seeks the Republican presidential nomination while carrying on a very public romance with a black actress lugging around potentially devastating personal baggage and an activist history at odds with the GOP agenda. Even in the world of fiction, the Republican Party wouldn’t nominate such a candidate. His campaign works well enough, however, that he succeeds in helping deny the nomination to the compromised candidate favored by most party insiders.  Divided and dispirited, the GOP turns to a black military hero/general bearing an uncanny resemblance to Colin Powell.

That Patterson used Powell as the model for his savior candidate spoke volumes about the stature the real life Powell attained.  Americans from most segments of the political spectrum looked up to and respected him. He wasn’t perfect, as his championing of the Iraq misadventure demonstrated, but most indicators are that he was a patriot.