The Foreign Service Journal, February 2005

32 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 5 F O C U S O N T H E P O W E L L L E G A C Y C OLIN P OWELL : F OUR T UMULTUOUS Y EARS or Colin Powell, it was unfortunate that some of his Bush administration colleagues did not have the same admiration for him that his countrymen did. His approval ratings among Americans were stratospheric. But in senior government councils, Powell often felt like the odd man out. It’s rare for a Cabinet officer to admit to being out of step ideologically with fellow appointees, but Powell did so in an interview with the Washington Times in early 2004 that was intended for a book, but some of it was used in a Times post-resignation story. He told reporter Bill Sammon that on a scale of zero to 100, with 100 being the most conservative, he ranked signif- icantly lower than other key officials, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Defense Under Secretary Douglas Feith and State Under Secretary John Bolton. “If you put, say, Cheney up around 90, and Don and Condi and company between 80 and 90, and you put Bolton and Feith at about 98, then I’d be somewhere around 60, 65,” he said. “So I’m a little bit out of the mold you would expect.” Scores of foreign governments wish there had been more in the administration who thought as Powell did. He was widely viewed as a moderating force amid a sea of dug-in rightists. With his departure, there will be no leavening presence, or so the conventional wisdom goes. But there also is the perception that his succes- sor, Rice, will have the president’s ear more than Powell did. Powell was always careful to say he served at the “pleasure of the president,” a phrase he used continu- ously in his final months in office when asked about his future plans. Apparently, it was the president’s “plea- sure” for Powell to stay on for four years and not a day longer. He converted Powell to lame-duck status with more than two months left before inauguration day and with Powell planning extensive travel between mid- November and mid-December — seven countries in total, six of them the sites of international conferences. Cheney may have been his biggest problem. Not only did Cheney outrank him, but he decided early on that national security would be his specialty. It’s quite possible that he weighed in on foreign policy more than any preceding vice president. On issues such as Iraq and North Korea, Cheney was in a position to pull rank on Powell — and did so. Cheney had some claim to expertise on internation- F H IS PERSONAL POPULARITY CONSISTENTLY EXCEEDED THAT OF THE POLICIES HE DEFENDED . E VEN SO , WITHIN THE ADMINISTRATION HE OFTEN FOUND HIMSELF OUTGUNNED . B Y G EORGE G EDDA