One of Colin Powell’s heroes is Gen. George Marshall, a white of Southern stock who served Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. But Powell has never objected very hard to being called “the black Eisenhower,” after a very different sort of general who enlisted in the GOP. “You don’t know my polities,” he warned a colleague who made the mistake of labeling him a Democrat in print. “Nobody does.”
Bob Woodward’s stories about Powell’s differences with President Bush over the gulf war have Washington scrambling to fill in this blank. After The Nation sent a reporter rummaging through voter registration lists in pursuit of some answers, the gossip column of The Washington Times reported that the magazine would identify Powell as a registered independent. That did little to unriddle the enigma.
Still, Powell has dropped a few clues. He cares more about his duties as a black role model than making money. At the end of the Reagan era, when he was serving as national-security adviser, he considered dropping from the administration and the Army after a speech agent offered him a package of 50 stemwinders at $20,000 a twist. He phoned Bruce Llewellyn, a cousin and confidant, to analyze the offer, Llewellyn says when he asked Powell what the administration could counteroffer, the following conversation took place:
“He said they were offering him a fourth star. I said, ‘That’s not bad. How do you get along with George Bush?’ He said, ‘Great. He comes by here every day for around 15 minutes and schmoozes.’ I said, ‘How you doing with the guys in the Army?’ He said, ‘They’re saying, “Come on back “.‘So I said, ‘Let’s figure out the timetable.’ [The Army chief of staff job was due to open in 19 months, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff position in nine months.] I said, ‘Do you know any other black officer who has had a shot doing those things?’ He said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘See what happens.’ And it worked out.”
Now Woodward says that Powell later turned Bush down when he offered him the job of running the CIA “because he felt uneasy” about the new president, and that the way Bush exploited racial emotions over Willie Horton contributed to this uneasiness.
So race and polities as well as guns and national security do figure in Powell’s calculations. The general admires what the Rev. Jesse Jackson has done for African-Americans. During the early ’60s, when Jackson was marching with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Powell did a tour in Vietnam. His family stayed in Birmingham, home of Sheriff “Bull” Connor and his police dogs. Powell’s father-in-law had to keep a shotgun in the closet to protect the family. When Powell was stationed at Fort Benning, Ga., he couldn’t get a hamburger in half the cafes off base. He hasn’t forgotten the long, nonstop drives to Birmingham when he couldn’t easily stay in motels. He still favors Holiday Inns because it was one of the first national chains to integrate.
The relationship between Powell and Jackson is complex. Conservatives see Powell as mainstream, a success within the system; they brand Jackson as a radical. Getting too close to Jackson could be the kiss of death for Powell with both parties.
In gentle self-defense, Jackson says that while it’s easy for Powell to look good as an upholder of national security, the moment he leaves the safe haven of the military it may not be possible for him to remain silent on matters like Bush’s cuts in aid to cities or his position on civil-rights legislation,
At the White House Correspondents’ dinner in Washington two weeks ago, Powell rather jovially spent some time talking in front of a roomful of reporters with Ron Brown, chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Did this signify a tilt toward the Democrats? Hardly. Powell’s strategy is to stay in the Army and prepare any political battlefields that lie ahead. Presumably he wants a second term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs. In the years before a second term ends in 1993, he will likely accept more public appearances such as the trip he took to the Bronx a few weeks ago, where he threw out a ball at Yankee Stadium and talked to blacks and Hispanics at his old high school. He’s signaling that he’ll keep all of his choices open, and that if the right moment or party comes along, he’ll stand for everything he chooses to stand for.
