“Yeah, I’m big on Volvos,” conceded Colin Powell, an aggressively rational, practical man.
Powell has bought, fixed, repainted and resold 30 old Volvos in the last decade. It started with a son in college who wanted “something sporty.”
Powell “didn’t want to give him something sporty,” instead buying “something boxy but sufficiently yuppie,” a 1977 Volvo.
“Cars are mechanical contraptions,” he told me last week. “Whatever problem they have is diagnosable. You can fix it, either by putting in a part, adjusting something, or throwing it away . . . using manuals and wiring diagrams and eliminating the possibilities down to a single one or two, working the car back to life.”
Might that be a tip-off, I wondered, to whether he’ll partake in the inherently irrational act of running for president? He does, does he not, prefer control to what he calls the “gods of the unknown.”
“It’s a stretch,” he says of my dime-store psychoanalysis.
Ever willing to be used, I and other media folks were drawn to an office building in Alexandria, Va., by the retired general whose studied indecision beguiles official Washington and its bored, obedient chroniclers. The New York Times had him at 10 a.m., the Tribune at 2:30 p.m., with others sandwiched between.
Our hour together, one-on-one, just like sessions scheduled with the giants of the trade (Barbara Walters, Jay Leno, Larry King and, who knows, maybe Larry Sanders), was tied to a national tour for his autobiography, “My American Journey.” It formally began Saturday in nearby McLean, Va., and arrives in Chicago Thursday, with a signing at Borders Bookshop, 830 N. Michigan Ave., serving as a way for Random House to recoup a $6 million advance and a five-week odyssey of self-analysis for Powell.
Picture Achilles, who agonized inside a tent before joining the siege of Troy, instead pent up in a suburban high-rise and mulling whether to go after Bill of Little Rock rather than Hector.
” `Aggressively rational,’ ” he says, repeating my phrase. “That’s good. That’s right. I am very rational. I always take the time available to make a decision. I never make an early or late one. Over the next month or so, I will see whether this is a rational or irrational act.”
What will others see?
An independent-minded, streetwise but political soldier who has navigated through two back-stabbing cultures, the Pentagon and civilian Washington. A self-described fiscal conservative and social moderate, who resembles practical, non-ideological Midwest Republicans. A Jim Thompson in camouflage.
There’s what he terms an “Ozzie and Harriet” upbringing by Jamaican immigrant parents amid Bronx poverty, a climb to the top of the military as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a 33-year marriage and three kids.
No surprise, the Establishment and a media elite bored with President Clinton and GOP challengers have fawned over him at recent parties. He seemed to revel in attention accorded him at the home of former Washington Post Editor Ben Bradlee and wife Sally Quinn, according to a guest. That gathering honored the wife of famous Post reporter Bob Woodward, for whom Powell was a major source on a Persian Gulf war book.
Powell’s vision for America is one “where every child is born into a family with two loving, caring parents who have jobs which allow them to provide an adequate (home) for that child, and give that young person a sense of right and wrong, of values.” There would be good schools and a chance to better one’s parents.
He became an even more unabashed supporter of free markets during two years of $60,000-a-speech-appearances before groups such as the sporting goods manufacturers. He was amazed, for example, to discover the growth of a new, billion-dollar in-line skates industry.
As for government’s role, he would largely limit it to the common defense, infrastructure and transportation-meaning tanks, roads and air-traffic control. Yet while endorsing the GOP thrust to send money and power back to the states, in the process overpraising the states’ creativity and compassion, he parts company when it comes to those in distress.
That morning the Senate GOP had been dealt a blow, when a proposal to deny benefits to mothers who had more children while on welfare was defeated. He agrees with the majority.
There’s more motivating an unwed teen to have a child than just getting “another 70 bucks,” Powell said. “She has nothing else in her life of value. So I don’t think we can simply say, `We’ve capped it, fine, let’s move on.’ “
When it comes to a balanced budget, he says the GOP and the White House dissemble. “For them to argue between whether it’s seven years or 10 years is sort of comical to me. I’ve been around this town too long. Most of them don’t know what things will look like three years out.”
Powell knows what the next five weeks will be like. A man who admits to having rehearsed his key line at an early gulf war news conference (“Our strategy in going after this army is very simple. First we are going to cut it off, and then we are going to kill it.”) is primed as if for a doctoral defense.
To gulf war critics who argue we stopped too soon and should have wiped out Iraq’s army and moved on to Baghdad, he’ll answer: “That was never a political objective set by the United Nations or the American Congress. The objective was to kick the Iraqi army out of Kuwait.” It’s no longer there and “Saddam Hussein is now strategically weak, going nowhere.”
What about his days as aide to Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger and overseeing the Army’s 1986 transfer of TOW missiles to the CIA? Those were critical to the arms-for-hostages swap with Iran that was kept from Congress.
“It’s true that I was the one Weinberger asked to have the missiles transferred. It was done in response to a policy decision by the president that was legal. It was certified by the attorney general of the United States. The suggestion I was part of a conspiracy is stretching it a bit. It was secret. It was supposed to be secret.”
Well, how about back in 1987, as President Ronald Reagan’s national security adviser? Was he not middleman in our unseemly attempt to overthrow the Nicaraguan government, finding money for the contras and threatening Costa Rica’s president with an aid cutoff if he didn’t get on board?
“I was the point man for contra funding,” said Powell, who disclosed a few minutes later that he voted against odious contra chum Oliver North, and for Democrat Charles Robb, in last year’s Virginia Senate race.
“The program enjoyed support from the government. People were willing to fight communist tyranny. It was well known we were doing everything possible to get aid to the contras. But it is not accurate that I threatened people I would cut off aid.”
And, finally, the My Lai massacre. As deputy operations officer of the Americal Division in Vietnam, he received a soldier’s letter complaining of indiscriminate shooting of civilians. He told superiors nothing was amiss.
He offered me relevant documentation to prove that the writer’s letter contained no specifics. A major then, he didn’t even hear of My Lai until four months later, he says. He will be tough to crack on this one.
When I ask if he has qualms about profiting so handsomely from public service-after all, the great Gen. George Marshall didn’t write his memoirs because of such an aversion-he rattles off names of others who did, including U.S. Grant and Dwight Eisenhower.
“We might have gained a lot from Marshall’s memoirs,” he says.
So, will he ultimately run?
His wife doesn’t want him to. “She’s been fairly candid in her expressions.”
He’s also young (58), now wealthy and mindful of a public perhaps yearning for a hero. And he’s restless.
“I just don’t want to do speeches or hang around my house,” he says.
Clear?
