Powell Merely Posing As A Leader
Colin Powell has emerged from his self-imposed exile to sell books. In doing so, this otherwise superb role model for making it the hard way has revealed that he is prepared, should he decide to run for president, to fight the wrong war on the wrong battlefield.
In his new book, Powell describes himself as a “fiscal conservative with a social conscience.” On abortion, America’s premier civil rights issue, he is pro-choice, which puts him on a par with presidential candidate Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.). Specter won’t win the nomination largely because of his position on this issue, and neither will Powell.
Powell also dismissed religious conservatives who are concerned about the laws Congress passes (or doesn’t pass). They believe Congress sometimes works against the best interests of the nation. Powell says that God does not provide us with a legislative agenda. Martin Luther King Jr. saw a connection between eternal truths and temporal justice. His rhetoric and political activism and his venue - black churches - were loaded with religious language, symbolism and claims of divine positions on specific legislation relating to civil rights. What could Powell mean?
Theologian Carl Henry told me, “Unfortunately, many of Powell’s comments are middle-of-the-road vehicles that sooner or later must swerve right or left to avoid collision. Saying that God doesn’t have a legislative agenda is a SCUD missile that can easily veer off course. It may mean that God is disinterested in legislative particulars, or that although He reveals enduring moral principles like the Ten Commandments, He charges us to apply them in the specifics of statute law. If Powell doesn’t mean the latter, he invites a society that reduces justice to the wavering will of the majority or the whims of a tyrant.”
Philosophy drives policy. Powell appears to care more about some policies than others and about philosophy not at all. How else to explain his apparent nonchalance about which party he might belong to (he says he voted for Kennedy and Johnson, but also for Reagan and Bush). But Republicans and Democrats are as different philosophically and politically as, well, Reagan and Johnson.
“I distrust rigid ideology from any direction,” writes Powell, who believes in affirmative action but not quotas. Would he be willing to negotiate those points away, or are they rooted in a firm ideology?
What Powell risks in his “come and catch me if you can” approach to politics is presenting himself as a messiah figure, too good for the rest of us, but willing to be the designated savior if we entreat him sufficiently. That says as much about people who are searching for such a figure as it does about Powell himself.
Ideas matter, and the country suffers less from a lack of civility than a lack of conviction.
Powell asks the right questions: “How do we find our way again? How do we re-establish moral standards? How do we end the ethnic fragmentation that is making us an increasingly hyphenated people? How do we restore a sense of family to our national life?” But those questions can’t be answered without a firm ideology: that sex before marriage is wrong; that faithfulness in marriage is right; that divorce and the singleparent households it creates are major contributors to social decline; that a spiritual renewal must precede an economic and political renewal or we will resemble Europe, which mostly worships at the shrine of the here and now.
William Kristol, editor and publisher of The Weekly Standard magazine, thinks Powell will run and win the GOP nomination. But, he cautions, “a Powell presidency could thwart hopes for a fundamental transformation of the Republican Party and American politics. A Powell administration would be centrist and establishmentarian.”
Reason enough to buy the book, but not to buy the man as president. For on the things that matter most, Powell is absent without leadership.
xxxx