I envisioned dining with corporate chieftains and listening to Powell make a post-9/11 pitch for greater citizen involvement. But the 100 or so people gathered in the ornate Benjamin Franklin Room at the State Department were a far more eclectic group than businessmen with deep pockets. There were heads of nonprofit international groups, ambassadors from Third World countries, several prominent Democrats and a handful of media types, including liberal columnist Mary McGrory.
The leftward tilt of the gathering made it seem like Clinton Redux. Several guests confided it was their first time in the building since the election. Powell presided with an easy casualness that contrasted with the formality of the room, and with the serious subject he had brought us together to discuss. We were there to get a crash course in the horrors of land mines, a cause that Powell has embraced more fully and publicly than I can recall any of his predecessors doing. Not even the allegedly bleeding-heart-liberal Clinton administration took this one on with such gusto.
The statistics are gruesome. Land mines litter the poorest countries of the world, taking their deadly toll decades after invading armies flee or guerrilla movements disband. Even before the U.S. bombing began in Afghanistan, 3,000 people were maimed or killed each year by land mines, many of them left behind by the Soviets during their 10-year siege of the country. Jordan’s Queen Noor, seated next to Powell, took on the eradication of land mines as her personal crusade, following in the footsteps of Princess Diana, who before her death had used her celebrity to draw attention to the plight of those injured by the deadly leftovers of war.
Powell committed the Bush administration to clearing land mines in Afghanistan, and to “rebuilding” the country. He invoked President Bush’s name several times in making these pledges, as though repeating the words often enough might make them true, or at least more difficult to back away from. I don’t recall candidate Bush ever being asked about, or mentioning, the issue of land mines. I’m sure he’s in favor of humanitarian efforts, but with a growing budget crunch, I doubt it’s as big a priority for the president as it is for Powell.
As for nation building, Bush talked about that a lot during the campaign, and he made himself clear: He wasn’t for it. But reality intruded in the person of Colin Powell, who almost single-handedly in this administration has steered Bush away from the go-it-alone arrogance he expressed during the campaign toward the same coalition-building that was a hallmark of his father’s presidency. Powell’s stature and prestige around the world helped make it possible for Bush to credibly abandon his cowboy rhetoric and become a statesman. Powell is a natural diplomat, but without the stiff formality that characterizes the profession. He worked the room, kissing the women and placing his arm around the men in gestures of camaraderie. The affection for him seems genuine. I got the feeling that most of the people who came to the State Department that night would walk on hot coals barefoot for Powell.
But there is no Team Powell. He is virtually alone in the administration, a measure of both his power as an individual and the fragility of his hold on policy. Who are his allies? I asked a Powell friend. There was along pause before he answered. It reminded me of when a reporter asked President Eisenhower about the accomplishments of his vice president, Richard Nixon. Eisenhower replied that if he had a week, he could think of some. Powell’s friend named Bush’s chief of staff, Andy Card, a Massachusetts native who shares Powell’s instinctive moderation. “Not Condoleezza,” this friend said adamantly. Powell is often on the opposite side of issues from Condoleezza Rice, the national-security adviser, who has a harder edge to her views. Powell gets along well with the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Negroponte, and the head of the Agency for International Development, Andrew Natsios. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage is Powell’s drinking buddy and an old friend, but Armitage is in Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s camp.
Powell does have one ace card, and that’s former President Bush. “He talks to him all the time,” says this friend. “And you know what the president tells him? ‘Keep my boy out of trouble.’ The senior Bush wasn’t creative, this friend confides, “but he was sane.”
Powell is an outpost in the administration. One friend says it would be a miracle if Powell lasts four years in a job that requires an exquisite balancing act. Powell hated the early September Time magazine cover story that portrayed him as losing influence, a moderate voice in a muscular administration. “He was hurting,” says this friend. But 9/11 gave Powell the opening to assert himself, and since then he’s been on the winning side of various battles, from holding back on expanding the war into Iraq to finessing the terms of the ABM treaty with Russia. The cover story of The New York Times Sunday magazine last week portrays a resolute Powell in command, at least for now.
“He’d make a great president,” a Republican senator mused at the end of the evening, “if only his wife would give her blessing.” But it’s not just Alma Powell who resists the presidency. It’s Colin Powell, and his sense of himself. Lifted of the burden of being a candidate, he wears the mantle of leadership so gracefully that he leaves everybody wishing for more.
