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An Ex-Powell Aide Explains Why the Time Is Right for an Obama Endorsement--UPDATED
UPDATE: On Sunday, Colin Powell did endorse Barack Obam. Appearing on Meet The Press, he presented an eloquent statement of support in which he hailed Obama's "transformational" role, leadership ability, and intellectual curiosity. Powell emphasized that he believed that John McCain, his longtime friend, could be a good president, but he maintained that the GOP has become too much in hock to its right-wing base and that Sarah Palin was not at all ready to be president. Despite Powell's tarnished reputation--due to his starring role in the Iraq WMD fiasco--his unequivocal endorsement is a boost for Obama and yet one more problem for McCain. The below piece was written before Powell did the deed, but note Larry Wilkerson's explanation of the timing of Powell's endorsement. In this instance--unlike when he backed Bush's invasion of Iraq--Powell stuck to the Powell Doctrine, at least the Powell Doctrine of Decision-making....
With NBC News reporting that Colin Powell will appear on Meet the Press this Sunday, speculation is mounting that former Republican secretary of state will endorse Barack Obama for president. Politico reports
Retired Gen. Colin Powell, once considered a potential running mate for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), now may endorse his opponent, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), according to Republican sources. But an air of mystery surrounds Powell's planned live appearance Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," and no one is sure what he will say.
Note the use of the word "may."
Predicting the most anticipated endorsement of the 2008 campaign has been a pundit standby for months. In June, Robert Novak asserted, "Powell probably will enter Obama's camp at a time of his own choosing." In August Bill Kristol declared that Powell would endorse Obama at the Democratic convention and "quite possibly" speak at the convention. Last week, Lawrence O'Donnell wrote, "It now seems beyond doubt that Colin Powell will endorse Barack Obama and thereby hammer the final nail in the coffin of the Republican campaign to hold onto the White House." He cited no sources.
Will Powell take the leap this weekend? In tracking the Powell story these past few months, I have periodically checked in with Larry Wilkerson, who was Powell's chief of staff at the State Department and who had worked with Powell in a variety of positions going back to 1989. Wilkerson always said the same thing: with Powell, it's all about the 60-percent rule--that is, the general manner in which he makes big decisions. Wilkerson explains:
Powell has a continuum he uses. It's based on time and information. Most people make mistakes because on this time/information continuum, they either decide too fast, with too little information, and thus make a bad decision, or they wait to get perfect information and then are a day late, and a dollar short--too late with their decision to influence events. Powell believes the optimum point is 60 percent. That is, if you have roughly 60 percent of the available information--and, in a perfect coincidence--are at about 60 percent of the elapsed time--that is when you are most apt to make the best decision. In the case of this political campaign this process translates into Powell's having at least a 3-2 chance of being on the winning side were he to endorse, and that he does it early enough to still influence the result.
Voila! Obama has opened a wide enough lead in the polls that he has become a betting favorite. A 3-to-2 favorite? Maybe. And if you start the clock at the conclusion of the GOP convention, the general election hit the 60-percent point last Sunday.
By Wilkerson's explanation, the circumstances are indeed in place for a Powell endorsement this weekend. At this stage--with Obama opening a lead, McCain failing to win the last debate, the economic crisis continuing to dominate the news, and not much time left for a major change of direction in the campaign--such an endorsement would be rather significant but it would also be only 60-percent gutsy.
Actually, it's only 40% gutsy, since 60% of the country is already behind Obama, but better late than never.
If Powell wants to endorse Obama, that's his business, but not his redemption. If he manages, somehow, to finally grow himself sixty percent of an actual spine, even that 'miracle' will not bring the dead back to life.
No, the only morally significant service Colin Powell could possibly do for his country now is to man-up, own his failures, and testify wholeheartedly against the Bush Administration.
But I'm not holding my breath.
Sure Colin, endorse when the election is close and your endorsement doesn't help. Same courage you showed standing up to the bushies deception on Iraq.
I don't think the man that lost his honor by lying to the United Nations about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction would further anyone's candidature with his endorsement. It might even wake some voters up to the veneer of marketing that has been abusively used in this election.
Colin who? Does anyone really care what Colin Powell thinks or endorses. I believe he lost most of his credibility with his craven support for the Iraq War. Even that aside, he was generally an ineffective Sec of State. If anything endorsing Obama now only helps Colin P bask in Obama's reflected glory.
It would be quite interesting to see an extended interview with Powell about his involvement in pushing the Iraq War, similar to "The Fog of War" with Robert McNamara.
General Powell was hung out to dry by the Bush Administration. He made his exit in his own time and his own way. A majority of Americans hold him in high esteem. If he chooses to endorse Senator Obama, I am sure it would be welcomed by their campaign.
Saxxon, are you claiming that Colin Powell is not responsible for lying? I'm sure that Michael Moore will agree with you for electoral expediency despite his documentary which clearly conveys the opposite impression, that Moore did hold Powell responsible.
General Powell has earned the respect of this nations military men and of it's veterans. He has immense popularity with them and their families. He is by far the highest ranking graduate of the OCS system, and he did it the old fashioned way, he earned it and worked his way up the chain. He proved that you did not have to graduate from Hudson High to become the Chief of Staff of the Army, nor to become head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He has served this nation for decades at the highest level of military and civilian leadership, as Secretary of State, he was a very effective international leader. His choice today of Barack Obama to become the next President says more of Senator Obama's promise to become a widely accepted leader than he is right at this moment, Senator Obama's star is on the rise where Senator McCains is flaring out, and right now he has been flaring out in all directions in his attempt to get elected, and it even disgusts his friend of 25 years General Powell, that should SPEAK volumes about John McCain. I SALUTE General Powell for his love of this nation and again for his continued leadership.
Mr Baily is like most Americans, willing to let a War Criminal under the Bu$h regime while Secretary of State go unpunished.
They think to commit Treason against the USA under the Reagan administration with Iran-Contra, negotiating with Terrorist's, while exchanging weapons for cocaine is honor and duty rolled into one.
The officer was just following orders during the Mai-Li massacre and other atrocities committed while the CIA hooked soldiers on heroin during Vietnam.
How many minorities have died at the expense of Colin Powell's rise during his career while enriching himself?
Wehrmacht soldiers found themselves swinging from a rope for committing lesser offenses.
The agent of change is endorsed by the Neocon's most effective weapon of mass deception!
If it had not been for Colin Powell's wife telling him not to run, he would probably be our President instead of George Bush....That is really something to think about! Osama Bin Ladin would have been hung up to dry a long time ago, there would not have been a War in Iraq and America would still hold her head highly as a proud Nation-No POWS would have been shipped around the world and tortured to death by our incumbent No-Constitutionalists and President Powell would not have permitted the Oil companies free reign to ruin the economy! I really wish his wife had not been so fearful!
Mr. Independent,
Would've, should've could've and he didn't. Wish in one hand, defecate in the other, and see which one fills first. That's what we're playing with, a dirty hand. Powell's endorsement is meaningless at this point.
Jimmy, you keep telling yourself that.
The way I see it, from what I've read, Powell was under considerable pressure to tell Bush/Cheney's lies at the U.N. His sense of honor, which I believe he takes seriously (unlike, say, Bush or McCain), was sullied by his subsequent error in judgment.
I believe he chose his moment well. At a time when he could not possibly be accused of running for President, himself, he took his own back from Bush/Cheney for what they encouraged him to do. If it was also in some degree vengeance, then it was a vengeance well deserved by the Republicans. As far as I'm concerned, Colin Powell squared things, today, for himself, for his country, and for his fellow Americans.
As for his endorsement being "meaningless" at this point -- that remains to be seen. My guess is that he could not possibly have made his thoughts known with better timing or greater exposure than he did today.
"Oh, the cravenness of those who make a stand, when it is safe to do so!"
This article implies that Powell only endorsed Obama for political reasons, because Obama appears to be heading for victory in November, and because Powell wants to be on the "winning side".
I don't believe that for a minute. Powell endorsed Obama for the reasons he says he did, not because of political expediency. If he thought McCain was the better candidate, he would have come out in support of McCain, regardless of the polls.
This article diminishes and demeans Powell's endorsement.
As far as I know, Colin Powell is no longer politically active, not running for office or seeking any appointment, so the idea of him being gutsy or not seems to miss the point. He has nothing to gain personally by endorsing Obama, and is sure to incur the wrath of some republicans in doing so. His mistake in endorsing the Iraq war and trying to peddle the WMD line at the UN has cost him dearly, and I suspect he would take it back if he could, knowing what everyone now knows about the yellowcake fable. I would have voted for him in 2000, but I can't blame him for passing up the opportunity to have half the country attack him mercilessly for four years. It's the very fact that he handles power with skill and grace and doesn't seem to be addicted to power that made him such an attractive candidate for president. Now that his moment has passed, he should be given the respect due anyone who has grappled with such earthshaking matters as war and international relations.
While I'm quite sure that Powell made a terrible error in judgment in his speech to the U.N., he's just a man...a guy whose judgment is usually sound. I think he feels as I do about my former political party, the GOP. It has gone way too far to the right and now, like the religious right wingnuts, it has become a messenger of hate and prejudice. I despise them for what they do. My senator John McCain also made a terrible judgment call in bringing Sarah Palin onboard his campaign. I'm sure he regrets it. I will be so glad to see him and his wacky hockey mom go down in embarrassing defeat.
General Powell was hung out to dry by the Bush Administration. He made his exit in his own time and his own way. A majority of Americans hold him in high esteem."
Finally someone with a little sense - it wouldn't have made any difference if he had quit - Bush and friends were going into the war regardless. He is a military man and military men obey. I respect him more than anyone else I know in government.
It's unfortunate that people are so blinded by hindsight. It was NOT obvious at the time of Powell's speech that there were no WMD. I believe Powell when he denies knowledge of the Bush/Cheney war deceptions. I realize others are justifiably embittered about the war - I am too. I personally feel the man is honorable, as do the folks that I know who know him. This will undoubtedly be an unpopular view on this particular forum. As for Michael Moore: I enjoy his movies, but he has an agenda. He doesn't hide that fact, actually he openly admits to it. I take extra grains of salt when listening to someone who is desperately trying to convince me. His opinion of Powell doesn't even register interest in me, though I often enjoy Moore's occasionally accurate films.
Go figure, Colin Powell doesn't conform to your ideals. It's too bad most of the responses here don't take into account the effect of the Powell endorsement on the moderate/conservative undecided voters in the country.
The same way that McCain/Palin going negative only helped him with the right wing nuts but hurt them with the undecided middle, this endorsement pushes more of those middle undecided voters to Obama.
No one has a chance with you folks responding so negatively to Powell. I'm surprised you're even supporting Obama.
Some 90% of the American people wanted the Iraq war. They wanted the war because they wanted REVENGE. Revenge on anybody and anywhere, as long as it was a Muslim country. Angry people and fearful people are easily manipulated. If you were against the war in 2003 you are the ONLY people entited to bitch about it now.
Personally, I think Mr. Powell wants a job, pure and simple.
General Powell did not fail; we failed him by allowing a corrupt President to use this country's resources for his own personal gain.
General Powell has a backbone made of honor, integrity, & steel. He did as he was ordered to do, but he had the freedom to disagree. When he resigned we lost a great leader.
Always liked Colin Powell... but he HAD to resign before he told all those lies to get us to go to Iraq. And I have a hunch he knew perfectly well he was telling lies - lies that killed people. I know my own opinion was swayed by Powell at the time. I knew Li'l Bush was a lying rat, but I figured Powell wouldn't lie....
He lies like a rug. So what's his endorsement of Obama really worth?
General Powell wants to make the correct decisions and thinks things out a long time. I would have hoped that he had not waited until it was almost dead certain that Obama would be the next president to endorse him, he should have done it at the convention when Palin was picked to be VP. I am glad he finally did it when he saw how ugly things were going and how erratic McCain had became. I guess it did take courage on his part to break with his party and still want to remain a Republican.
Powell still holds power & respect for many Republican / conservative / Independent voters. In other words, he can still sway votes towards Obama.
The Democrats / Liberals that hold Powell in contempt are already voting for Obama & it's UNlikely that they'll NOT vote for Obama because Powell endorsed him.
Posting caustic comments about Republicans on a Democratic website is preaching to the choir - you're not going to change anyones mind.
Posting bombastic comments about Republicans will NOT influence the centrists & independents to accept your point of view. Bitter sarcasm pushes people away from you - it doesnt' draw them towards you.
How one can transcend from the center right to the hard left is hard to comprehend. Perhaps his character is less than stellar as we were led to believe.
While this might help Obama some it sure hits ole man McCain right in the nose.
I remember clearly, Powell describing his error vis a vis the UN speech as an error of loyalty. It seemed to me that he was loyal to Bush the man instead of the Office of the President and the American people. It led Powell astray. He did a very, very wrong thing for a reason that was at least minorly noble. If Powell had been just as loyal to a good man an a good president who wasn't lying through his teeth, it would have been a good thing. The majority of the fault lies with Bush. PERSONAL loyalty is what Bush demands, not loyalty to office or government, PERSONAL loyalty. And personal loyalty depends wholly on the person you're being loyal TO.
Powell may be tarnished, but he still has a lot of influence for a lot of people. And that's not necessarily wrong.
While on the surface, it may appear laudatory for Colin Powell to endorse Sen. Obama, I also remember his ringing endorsement of the coming Iraq invasion before the United Nations and I have yet to hear him apologize for being such a vocal cheerleader for such a disaster.
I will be more appreciative of Powell if he finds the courage to repudiate the Bush Administration lock, stock and barrel.
Powell also endorsed the Iraq war.
This only confirms how much the Black community sticks together. Powell lost credibility over his LIES about WMDs.
I love and respect Colin Powell and absolutely have always known he was deceived and used by the Bush administration. Those who think differently are those who don't think!!!
Jim & Martha Benner: You have hit the nail on the head. I can also remind all of you that the Blind Hatred and Envy of the Clinton's played a major role, but not as much as The Media in their support of Obama. I've talked to about 15 folks yesterday and today and none have changed their minds and are voting for McCain.
Powell had unfettered access to everything classified - unlike the vast majority of the Senate. His own intelligence agency, the State Dept.'s INR - which reported to him stated that they seriously doubted aluminum tubes were for the purposes he stated.
From Pat Lang's Drinking the Koolaid
-snip-
For Greg Thielmann, who retired in September 2002 from his post as director of the Strategic, Proliferation and Military Affairs Office at the State Department's Intelligence Bureau, the issue of the aluminum tubes was an even more egregious case of policymakers' contamination of the intelligence process than the Wilson yellowcake affair. His position is,
"What was done with the aluminum tubes was far worse than what was done with the uranium from Africa. Because the intelligence community had debated over a period of months, and involved key scientists and engineers in the National Laboratories -- and foreigners as well -- in a long and detailed discussion. The way I would have characterized it, if you had asked me in July 2002, when I turned over the leadership of my office, there was a growing consensus in the intelligence community that this kind of aluminum was not suitable for the nuclear weapons program. So I was really quite shocked to see -- I was just retired -- the National Intelligence Estimate say that the majority of agencies came to the opposite interpretation, that it was going into the nuclear weapons program."
-snip-
First, there was the consistent refusal to provide witnesses and information to the U.S. Senate, especially regarding the projected costs of the war and the lack of opportunities to question key players such as General Jay Garner, who was appointed by the Defense Department to be the first head of the U.S. provisional authority in Iraq. There was also the subtle hiding of the objections of the Department of Energy and the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) in the NIE of October 2002. One congressional source explained that the classified NIE was made available in its entirety to only a select few members of Congress. There were verbal briefings and an elaborate process to access the document in a secure location. But it was never clear that the 27-page unclassified version that was available to every office was missing any crucial information.
http://www.mepc.org/journal_vol11/0406_lang.asp
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Powell was in on it, he wasn't duped, despite the fact that he pushed back at first.
OT - I always liked the story of Wes Clark outshooting Colin Powell in a shooting match.
Clark used the 1911 US Army standard issue Colt .45 automatic, Powell had a new spiffy Barreta.
Powell doesn't need a job. He's a retired four-star general. Taken a gander at retirement pay for four-star generals lately? Let's put it this way: unless he's spending ridiculous amounts of money, he's pretty comfy right about now.
That said, maybe his endorsement will make up for all the voters driven away when Clinton was first railroaded and then turned into Obama's majordomo. Believe it or not, SHE had brought moderate Republicans into the Democratic camp. Not that that, uh, matters or anything.
Even when it came time to pick a veep, Obama couldn't get it right. He chose a guy who was genuinely surprised at how "articulate" Obama is. Yeah. Okay.
I'm still voting McKinney. A pox on both your houses.
I keep reviewing images of Powell sitting before the United Nations and lying through his teeth. Endorsement schmorsement. The guy wants a job. Obama saying he will shortly "be consulting" with him is truly frightening. Et tu brut?
The lifeboats are getting crowded with the Neocons leaving the sinking ship
Before he made his deceptive pitch at the UN against Iraq, Colin Powell was famous for having participated in the cover-up of war crimes at My Lai. Powell's war crime credentials span decades and both of America's quagmires.
Being a community organizer and a state assemblyman in no way qualifies anyone to be commander-in-chief of the United States. On my way out of the eye clinic at the VA yesterday, I saw slick Obama pamphlets all over the place but no one for McCain. Obama is purchasing power but what will it cost the United States in the long run? It looks as if we'll soon find out.
Powell was a career military man, which explains his loyalty to the elected leaders of the country even if he personally disagreed with their decisions. I would expect no less from him, and would prefer that to individuals who feel they have the right to act as they wish regardless of the elected leadership. Overturning bad decisions is our job as voters.
More importantly, when the President was urging combat operations, the only two senior administration members who had ever seen combat were Powell and Tom Ridge...and they were the only two who argued against war as anything but a last-ditch solution. I'm a liberal democrat, but from friends in Washington know Powell took the position that he could do more from inside the administration than from outside...and when events proved that not to be the case, that Bush, Cheney et.al. would not be dissuaded by facts...he resigned.
Powell's reason for endorsing Obama are not good enough, and are false. He endorsed him, because of his own political greed. He does not even care who wins. I have always said Powell was a plant inside the Republican party. He endorsed Obama, for the same reason other racist blacks endorse him. He is black. People even got on tv, in our area, and said they were voting for obama because he is black. Everyone knows powell did the same. He is a traitor to the party, and should be remembered as such.
Is that why he blocked Clinton's attempt to end the military's anti-gay ban? Because 60% of the public agreed? Is that why he stood before the UN with a forged document lying about Iraq trying to get uranium? Why is the left cheerleading his endorsement of "our" supposedly leftwing candidate? http://dissentingjustice.blogspot.com/2008/10/powell-endorsement-good-th...
I suspect Powell endorsed Obama because he's not fool enough to endorse McCain.
Powell did well
I would like to see Colin tell his story also.
Colin Powell vouched for Senator Stevens of Alaska as a man of "impeccable integrity," too, and did it under oath.
Speaks volumes, eh?
Whoever the next president of the USA is, he should watch this Youtube video.
After being in bed with the neocons Colin Powell sees another role other than an uncle tom. Who can forget him doing Bush's dirty work- justifying the existence of WMD before the UN. Obama should distance himself from a man who should rightly be tried for crimes against humanity. Who knows, maybe Condi Rice might also jump ship.
Powell proves, if such proof was ever needed, that for blacks "race trumps all". He endorsed Obamie for that reason and that reason only.
As for those who worship Powell, he has never, as in never (except for the issue of special rights for homosexuals), been a conservative. He has always been a leftist.
I did not serve directly with him but was a contemporary and knew others who did serve with him- to a man they were astounded that he rose to the positions he did - he was, at best, in the bottom of the top third of officers. He is a proto-type of the "affirmative action" promotion.