Powell To Run? Book Tour Is Key Money Argues For Gop Rather Than Independent Run, He Says

Colin Powell says the money demands of a presidential campaign make the Republican nomination more attractive than an independent bid - and he’ll decide whether he’ll run after his book tour.

“I think I have the skills to handle the job,” Powell said in a published interview released Saturday.

If he jumps into the race, “you don’t do it to fool around, you do it to win. And I think that’s a pretty good rule for life as well as military operations,” Powell said.

To run as a Republican, he noted, he would have to jump in by November to get on primary ballots. He criticized the current Republican field for lurching to the right.

As an independent, Powell noted, he would not be eligible for the tens of millions of dollars in federal campaign matching funds. “It is not clear yet whether an independent run, unless it is self-financed” - meaning with a personal fortune like Ross Perot’s - “can actually succeed in winning a general election.”

On the other hand, Powell observed, “There seems to be more support in the countryside for an independent candidacy, which reflects more dissatisfaction in the countryside with what they see the two parties doing.”

Yet neither Powell, 58, nor his family, is sure a battle for the White House is worth it. “To be a successful politician … requires a calling that I do not yet hear,” the former chairman of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff wrote in the book. “I believe I can serve my country in other ways.”

He said he would decide when the tour was over, when he then can “sit down with my family and those people who provide me with advice and counsel and some very dear friends who care about me.”

Powell’s comments - his most detailed to date on a possible presidential run - were made in an interview with Time magazine, which is publishing excerpts from the retired general’s autobiography, “My American Journey,” in this week’s edition.

The memoir chronicles Powell’s life from his days growing up in the South Bronx in the 1940s and 1950s, a son of Jamaican immigrants, through his greatest triumph - leadership of military forces in the Persian Gulf War. That chapter includes the unnerving revelation that he had been asked to lay out an option for using tactical nuclear weapons and recounts profane shouting matches with the field commander, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf.

He blasts Clinton administration bumbling and fumbling on foreign policy - one reason he turned down an offer from President Clinton to become secretary of state.

Powell reportedly received a $6 million advance. He kicked off the book tour in suburban Washington on Saturday - a high-visibility, 25-city, prime-time TV blitz designed to generate “Powellmania” for the book and his potential candidacy.

“The book tour is sort of a comingout party for me,” said Powell. “The past two years I’ve done no interviews, no television. People are wondering what ‘Forrest Gump’ Colin Powell stands for. Well, they’re about to find out.”

In the book excerpt, Powell defines himself as “a fiscal conservative with a social conscience.”

He said neither the Democratic nor Republican Party “fits me comfortably in its present state.”

“I am troubled by the political passion of those on the extreme right who claim divine wisdom on political as well as spiritual matters … I am disturbed by the class and racial undertones beneath the surface of their rhetoric,” he said.

But, “on the other side of the spectrum, I am put off by patronizing liberals who claim to know what is best for society but devote little thought to who will eventually pay the bills.”

When it comes to policies on major issues that have politicians drawing swords in Washington, Powell remains vague and noncommittal.

In the book, Powell says, “The time may be at hand for a third major party to emerge to represent the sensible center of the political spectrum.” But he told Time that financial realities argued for a GOP run.

A Newsweek poll last week showed Powell beating Clinton 51 percent to 41 percent as a Republican but coming in last behind Clinton and Dole in a three-way race.

While the current GOP field caters to the “active wing” on the party’s right, Powell said, “there are a lot of Republicans who are somewhat silent and tend to be in the more moderate, Rockefeller vein.”