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. 

TRUMP AND ‘DISINFECTANTS’: CASTING BLAME ON TRUMP VOTERS

President Trump’s recent suggestion that Americans might inject themselves with

disinfectants as a way of treating Covid-19 sparked an intense debate among the three of us about who’s to blame for the presence in office of such a president. Rob throws everyone who voted for him under the bus, arguing that “respectable” people who voted for Trump in 2016 now

bear responsibility for his dangerous conduct. Henry and Woodson take a more restrained position, concluding that not everyone who voted for Trump foresaw the extremes to which he has gone. They say those who sat out the 2016 election bear responsibility too. Below, we hash out the disagreement.

DO ONLY TRUMP VOTERS OWN THIS?

After Trump made his outrageous suggestion that injections of disinfectants like bleach or

isopropyl alcohol inside the human body

might combat the virus, many in the medical and scientific community and manufacturers of disinfectant products reacted with horror. They had good reasons. Americans desiring Covid-19 cures flooded health hotlines and emergency management agencies countrywide with calls about such treatments. The product manufacturers warned of organ damage that could result from injecting or ingesting disinfectants. Doctors were aghast and shouted to whoever would listen, “No, don’t do it!”

As industry leaders, doctors, and public health officials scrambled to warn people against the president’s advice, Rob thinks it significant that some of them must have voted for him. He observes, “Surely, some of the doctors, nurses, public health officials, and industry executives who loudly condemned Trump for his potentially disastrous suggestion, voted for him.” Neither Henry nor Woodson find that particularly revelatory.

What Did Voters Know and When Did They Know it?

The three of us agree it’s now widely understood Trump doesn’t care much for science. The Union of Concerned Scientists, for example, has published a 100 item list of Trump administration attacks on science. That’s bad enough, but we did receive advance warning. Before the 2016 election, we got at least the following indications of Trump’s scientific illiteracy or hypocrisy and his affinity for off-the-wall theories:

1.  Windmills cause cancer and kill birds.

Trump started pushing this falsehood before the election in making clear he wouldn’t promote wind power as a fossil fuels alternative; 

 

2.  Climate change is a hoax. Despite the scientific community consensus that human activity causes

global warming, Trump insisted before the election, and still does, his political enemies made up the climate crisis and the science isn’t real;

3.  In a rating by Scientific American magazine of the general election candidates, including third party entrants, Trump came in last on his understanding of scientific endeavors.

These facts have significant consequences.

They demonstrate a dangerous proclivity for buying into conspiracy theories that float through the culture, particularly on the internet, without scientific basis and that could hurt individuals or nations.

Even these facts, Henry and Woodson argue, didn’t necessarily predict Trump would suggest a wild idea like injecting disinfectants. Rob says, “That sounds like a degree v. kind argument. Nobody would have thought Trump would take his craziness to the degree he has. I prefer thinking anyone capable of believing the kinds of things Trump said before the election, if given an exigent situation and a big enough microphone, might say anything.”

                                                 

Woodson and Henry note that Trump never held public office before, so he had no policy record voters could easily examine.

Unlike the three of us, the average American doesn’t spend hours each week considering the nuances of candidate records and public policy. They believe Rob holds the electorate to too high a standard.

         

How Does a Country Get Such a Leader?

As Rob thought about the dangers inherent in Trump’s injection suggestion, he decided condemning him alone isn’t enough. “True,

the electorate put him in the White House, fair and square. But, don’t the people who voted for him bear some of the responsibility for having someone like him in office, given what we knew beforehand?  Now that his conduct directly threatens lives, can we excuse those votes, especially by people who should know better – people like those in health care now crying out that Americans shouldn’t follow his reckless ramblings?”

Rob continues, “I don’t have survey data, but the reasons doctors and other medical people might have voted for Trump aren’t hard to fathom - probably the same reasons others did - tax cuts, limits on immigration,

fears of disfavored ethnic groups, appointment of anti-choice judges, reigning in the Environmental Protection Agency, and other federal regulatory bodies, unrestrained Hillary Clinton phobia. I assume there are others. Were any of those reasons worth this?

“I understand the harshness of the view I’ve expressed. I have thrown otherwise good

people under the bus before. Elections have consequences. I can’t give Trump voters a pass, especially not after this latest demonstration of insanity.”

While Henry and Woodson share Rob’s view that Trump has demonstrated his unfitness for office, they won’t say everyone who voted for him could have foreseen this. Who could have known the election would produce a president seemingly committed only to his own selfish political quest, devoid

 

of logic, humanitarian consideration, or enlightened principles? Nor are they willing to single out doctors and other medical professionals for special condemnation. They believe many who stayed home or voted for Trump in 2016 will vote for Joe Biden in 2020 because Joe Biden is no Hillary Clinton. Many former Trump voters will no longer have reason for seeing Trump as the answer to the country’s problems.