Colin Powell – The Real Republican Maverick

What did John McCain do after the Bush-Rove political machine ground his good name into the South Carolina mud in 2000? Something very unmavericky – he played ball with them all the through eight years of failed policies. What did John McCain do after who he called the “agents of intolerance” besmirched his name in that same 2000 campaign? He gave a commencement address at Liberty University. Why did John the Maverick lose his straight-talkin’ ways? He figured he had as good a chance as any to be the Republican nominee in 2008. John McCain sold out for a job.

What did Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell do when Dick Cheney and George Tenet fed him bad information and sent him to the United Nations a la Adlai Stevenson? He waited an appropriate amount of time because he’s a gentleman, he packed up Dick Armitage, and left the Administration that stabbed him in the back and left him out there hanging. Now that was Mavericky. Not relying on the broken down Republican Party, Powell took his own counsel this weekend and endorsed Barack Obama for president. In part, on Meet the Press he said:

… I have especially watched over the last six of seven weeks as both of them have really taken a final exam with respect to this economic crisis that we are in and coming out of the conventions. And I must say that I’ve gotten a good measure of both. In the case of Mr. McCain, I found that he was a little unsure as to deal with the economic problems that we were having and almost every day there was a different approach to the problem. And that concerned me, sensing that he didn’t have a complete grasp of the economic problems that we had. And I was also concerned at the selection of Governor Palin. She’s a very distinguished woman, and she’s to be admired; but at the same time, now that we have had a chance to watch her for some seven weeks, I don’t believe she’s ready to be president of the United States, which is the job of the vice president. And so that raised some question in my mind as to the judgment that Senator McCain made.

On the Obama side, I watched Mr. Obama and I watched him during this seven-week period. And he displayed a steadiness, an intellectual curiosity, a depth of knowledge and an approach to looking at problems like this and picking a vice president that, I think, is ready to be president on day one. And also, in not just jumping in and changing every day, but showing intellectual vigor. I think that he has a, a definitive way of doing business that would serve us well. I also believe that on the Republican side over the last seven weeks, the approach of the Republican Party and Mr. McCain has become narrower and narrower. Mr. Obama, at the same time, has given us a more inclusive, broader reach into the needs and aspirations of our people. He’s crossing lines–ethnic lines, racial lines, generational lines. He’s thinking about all villages have values, all towns have values, not just small towns have values.

And I’ve also been disappointed, frankly, by some of the approaches that Senator McCain has taken recently, or his campaign ads, on issues that are not really central to the problems that the American people are worried about. This Bill Ayers situation that’s been going on for weeks became something of a central point of the campaign. But Mr. McCain says that he’s a washed-out terrorist. Well, then, why do we keep talking about him? And why do we have these robocalls going on around the country trying to suggest that, because of this very, very limited relationship that Senator Obama has had with Mr. Ayers, somehow, Mr. Obama is tainted. What they’re trying to connect him to is some kind of terrorist feelings. And I think that’s inappropriate.

In this age of partisanship no matter the facts, Powell went through his own seemingly intellectually rigorous process and made a choice outside his party. Apparently, Colin Powell knows that the stakes this year are beyond party politics. We’ve had eight years of leading by the gut and appealing to just enough people to get re-elected. It’s time to think about the future and it’s time to repair the damage that’s been done to this country and this great country’s reputation abroad. Frankly, nothing the McCain campaign has said veers starkly enough from Bush policies for us to think that electing him will be anything different than George Bush’s third term. The Republican Party is not the party of Reagan and Goldwater any longer, it’s the party of Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed. It’s a coalition built on a narrow set of social issues that on most days of the year have nothing at all to do with most Americans’ lives.

Colin Powell proved on Sunday that he’s the only thing close to being a Republican Maverick this cycle. Who knows, maybe he’d make a good Secretary of State …