George Bush was not going to win reelection on memories of Desert Storm alone. His once stratospheric job approval rating in the polls was down by May 1992 to 40 percent (with the unfavorable rating at 53 percent). He had other problems. Dan Quayle was a drag on the ticket, Bush was warned, and “Dump Dan” became a fairly loud whisper in Republican circles. The press kept mentioning my name among likely replacements. As early as November 1990, during the Gulf War buildup, Parade magazine raised the possibility of a Bush-Powell ticket. My long-ago mentor at OMB, Fred Malek, now managing the Bush campaign, was rumored to be supporting the move. The campaign staff did some quiet polling which showed that Jim Baker pulled better than Dan Quayle as a vice presidential candidate. But my name pulled better than Baker’s. The speculation became so intense that by mid-May I felt I had to call Quayle. “Mr. Vice President,” I said. “I know how uncomfortable this talk has to be for you. All I can tell you is that I’m not the source. I’m not engineering anything. I intend to stick to my job as chairman.”
Quayle was gracious. “I know, Colin,” he said. “It’s part of the cost of doing business in this town.”
All the talk about my going on the Republican ticket was strictly Beltway navel-gazing to me. George Bush stuck by people. He had stuck by me when the sharks smelled blood over the Woodward book. And I was convinced that since the Vice President made clear that he had no intention of pulling out, George Bush was going to stick by Dan Quayle.
I was, however, still getting unsolicited feelers from the other side. Vernon Jordan, a politically connected Washington lawyer and close friend, came to see me that May on behalf of the camp of Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, who by now had the Democratic nomination sewn up. “Your polls are running off the chart,” Jordan told me. “Are you interested in running as Clinton’s VP?”
“Vernon,” I said, “first of all, I don’t intend to step out of uniform one day and into partisan politics the next. Second, I don’t even know what I am politically. And third, George Bush picked me and stuck by me. I could never campaign against him.”
I had had a Republican visitor many months before who made an interesting observation about my place in politics. Stu Spencer, the California sage who practically invented the modern political consultant, had stopped by my office in the Pentagon, and we talked generally about political life. Just as Stu was leaving, he said, “Colin, if you ever do go into politics, do it as a Democrat. I know you well enough, and I don’t think you’d be comfortable with some of the Republican agenda. You were raised in an old-fashioned Democratic home. You’re too socially conscious.” He gave me an impish smile and added, “As a Republican, I shouldn’t be telling you this.”
On July 25, I was returning to Fort Leavenworth for a dream come true. Ten years after the idea had first struck me, the monument to the Buffalo Soldiers had become a reality. I was on my way to Kansas to take part in the unveiling ceremony. After peering into the slave pens of Africa, after the pain of the Los Angeles riots, it was deeply satisfying to be taking part in a proud achievement of African-Americans.
As my talented speechwriter, Colonel Larry Wilkerson, and I worked on my speech for the dedication, I found myself thinking about the long struggle for racial justice in the military. I thought about Ben Davis, who stuck it out for four years at West Point while his fellow cadets gave him the silent treatment. After that ordeal, Davis reported for duty to Fort Benning, where he and his wife were shunned socially by white officers. Davis, who later commanded the Tuskegee Airmen in World War II, once remarked, “Combat was not easy, but you could only get killed once. Living with the day-to-day degradation of racism was far more difficult.”
I remembered the well-intentioned remarks of some of my white superiors: “Powell, you’re the best black lieutenant I’ve ever known.” Thank you, suh. But inside me, I was thinking, if you intend to measure me against only black lieutenants, you are making a mistake. I’m going to show you the best lieutenant in the Army, period. As I rose in rank, I learned to tolerate other well-intended white gambits: “Pleased to meet you, General Powell. You know, I once served with Chappie James.” Or Ben Davis, or Roscoe Robinson. Why didn’t they ever tell me they’d once served with George Patton or Creighton Abrams? I recognized their behavior as a gesture to establish a friendly link to me. Instead it underscored a separation. If I were to say, on meeting a white officer, “You know, I served with Gunfighter Emerson,” I am sure this news would be met with a blank stare.
After Desert Storm, the American people at long last were again proud of their military, and I wanted to use this momentum to help high school youths, particularly those in troubled inner cities, by increasing the number of Junior ROTC programs. Under Junior ROTC, active duty NCOs, but mostly retired officers and noncoms teach such high school courses as citizenship, leadership, and military history. They drill the students and take them on map reading exercises and field trips.
In the spring of 1992, I called in the Joint Staff personnel officer, Brigadier General Mary Willis, and told her, “I want a plan for increasing Junior ROTC on my desk in ten days.” In a week, General Willis had a proposal to take us from 1,500 to 2,900 high schools. The service chiefs bought into it. Secretary Cheney and President Bush backed the plan. And after Sam Nunn got behind the bill in the Senate, we wound up with approval for funding Junior ROTC in 3,500 high schools.
Yet, ironically, while we had a flock of programs in states with large rural areas, like Texas, we continued to meet resistance in certain urban areas. Liberal school administrators and teachers claimed that we were trying to “militarize” education. Yes, I’ll admit, the armed forces might get a youngster more inclined to enlist as a result of Junior ROTC. But society got a far greater payoff. Inner-city kids, many from broken homes, found stability and role models in Junior ROTC. They got a taste of discipline, the work ethic, and they experienced pride of membership in something healthier than a gang. Until 1993, there were still no Junior ROTC programs in any public school in New York City and only one private school offered the program. Finally, we broke through. Seven New York City schools presently have Junior ROTC programs, including my alma mater, Morris High School. College-level ROTC quite literally made my life. The junior program can provide a fresh start in life for thousands of endangered kids, particularly those from minorities living in crime-plagued ghettos. Junior ROTC is a social bargain.
The LA riots, Ben Davis, and kids in the inner cities were all running through my mind as I thought about what I wanted to say at the dedication of the Buffalo Soldiers monument. I arrived at Fort Leavenworth on a sweltering Kansas summer afternoon. The sky over the ceremonial site was turning dark with thunderheads. But nothing could mar the mood. A crowd of thousands engulfed the heart of the post where the monument stood. Flags snapped and bands played. A color guard from the 10th Cavalry, an original Buffalo Soldiers regiment, paraded by on horseback. The Kansas congressional delegation attended. The governor spoke. Finally, it was my turn. I looked out over the audience. Before me, bent over canes, sitting in wheelchairs, some still standing erect, were dozens of veteran Buffalo Soldiers, men in their nineties, even their hundreds. I looked up at the sky and said, “I know you’re all watching that very dark cloud. Forget about it. It ain’t going to rain on us, not today.”
I thanked the Fort Leavenworth military historian, Colonel von Schlemmer, for nourishing my first hope to memorialize the Buffalo Soldiers, and General Dougherty, who had kept the torch of this project burning when it almost guttered out. I saved my warmest praises for Commander Carlton Philpot, U.S. Navy. “Thank you, my friend, from the very bottom of my heart, for making my modest dream into a stunning reality,” I said. “There he is, the Buffalo Soldier,” I went on, pointing to the magnificent eighteen-foot-tall statue, “on horseback, in his coat of blue, eagles on his buttons, crossed sabers on his canteen, rifle in hand, pistol on his hip, brave, iron-willed, every bit the soldier that his white brother was.” African-Americans had an
swered the country’s every call from its infancy, I reminded the audience. “Yet, the fame and fortune that were their just due never came. For their blood spent, lives lost, and battles won, they received nothing. They went back to slavery, real or economic, consigned there by hate, prejudice, bigotry, and intolerance.”
Today, I pointed out, African-Americans were scaling the barriers, gaining overdue recognition. But black success stories did not drop out of the blue. “I know where I came from,” I said. “All of us need to know where we came from so our young people will know where they are going…. I am deeply mindful of the debt I owe to those who went before me. I climbed on their backs…. I challenge every young person here today: don’t forget their service and their sacrifice; and don’t forget our service and sacrifice, and climb on our backs. Be eagles!”
What a beautiful day it was, one forever engraved in my memory.
When the political party conventions ended in August, the battle lines were drawn: Bush-Quayle versus Bill Clinton and Senator Albert Gore, enlivened by the third-party candidacy of Ross Perot. At least, with the tickets decided, political speculation about me evaporated.
August also marked a personal milestone, thirty years of marriage for Alma and me. Our kids arranged a family-and-friends anniversary celebration at home. At one point, Mike called for everybody’s attention. We were about to see the saga of Alma and Colin, a videotape patched together from old home movies. I watched the grainy, jerky images of kids demolishing birthday cakes, parents grinning and waving into the camera, grandparents looking grave and dignified. I was proud of the generation we had produced. Mike was now recovered, on his feet, a family man himself, and enrolled in Georgetown Law School. Linda had made her Broadway debut in a Thornton Wilder retrospective, Wilder, Wilder, Wilder. Annemarie had graduated from William and Mary in May, done a stint for CNN at the political conventions, gone to work as a production coordinator for The Larry King Show, then joined Ted Koppel’s Nightline staff. No wonder they had done well, I reminded them. I had been named a Father of the Year that spring by the National Father’s Day Committee, which my kids thought was hilarious. Nobody is allowed to take himself too seriously around our house. When the guests were gone, Alma and I sat amid the festive debris knowing we were richly blessed. And in the lottery of love and marriage, I knew that I had been the big winner.
… … …
On Sunday morning, October 4, I was at home leafing through the New York Times, when an editorial headlined “At Least: Slow the Slaughter” riveted my attention. A new cloud had edged onto our radar screens, beginning in 1991 when the old Yugoslavia started to collapse in a smaller version of Soviet disintegration. Croatia and Slovenia declared themselves independent states. Then Bosnia-Herzegovina did the same. Serbs living in Bosnia, backed by a newly independent Serbia, started fighting to foreclose a Muslim-dominated state. The all-seeing eye of twenty-four-hour television kept thrusting images in our faces of rape, pillage, and murder committed by Bosnian Serbs against the region’s Muslims. Photographs of skeletal Muslim prisoners held in Bosnian Serb concentration camps looked like Dachau or Auschwitz all over again.
The week before the Times editorial appeared, I had been interviewed by Michael R. Gordon, the Times defense reporter who asked me why the United States could not assume a “limited” role in Bosnia. I had been engaged in limited military involvements before, in Vietnam for starters. I told the Times reporter, “As soon as they tell me it’s limited, it means they do not care whether you achieve a result or not. As soon as they tell me ‘surgical,’ I head for the bunker.” I criticized the pseudo-policy of establishing a U.S. “presence” without a defined mission in trouble spots. This approach, I pointed out, had cost the lives of 241 Marines in Lebanon.
The Times Sunday editorial, citing this earlier interview, lumped me with American officials who continued to “dither” over Bosnia while thousands died. The editorial referred to $280 billion a year that the United States spent on defense and concluded that the American people were owed more on their investment by the armed forces than “no-can-do.” “President Bush could tell General Powell what President Lincoln once told General McClellan,” the editorial ended. “If you don’t want to use the Army, I should like to borrow it for a while.”
I reacted about as coolly as Norm Schwarzkopf had when he was accused of McClellanitis. I exploded. I headed for my study and dashed off a blistering response. As soon as I finished, I called Bill Smullen at home and read it to him.
“Sir,” the always reflective Smullen said, “send that to the Times and you’ll wind up with a letter to the editor. I suggest you tone it down, broaden the base of your argument, and maybe you’ll get an op-ed piece out of it.”
Which is what I did. Four days later, with Cheney’s and the NSC’s approval, there appeared on the Times op-ed page my response, headlined “Why Generals Get Nervous” (not my title, but one concocted by a Times editor). But I did get my message across. Whenever the military had a clear set of objectives, I pointed out—as in Panama, the Philippine coup, and Desert Storm—the result had been success. When the nation’s policy was murky or nonexistent—the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, creating a Marine “presence” in Lebanon—the result had been disaster. In Bosnia, we were dealing with an ethnic tangle with roots reaching back a thousand years. The fundamental decision was simple, but harsh. Do we get into this war or don’t we? If the political decision was to go in, I was prepared to do what I had done in Desert Storm, to lay out the military options. But the Times took the editorial position that we could just take a little bite. “So you bet I get nervous when so-called experts suggest that all we need is a little surgical bombing or a limited attack,” I wrote. “When the desired result isn’t obtained, a new set of experts then comes forward with talk of a little escalation.” History, I pointed out, “has not been kind to this approach.” As for Lincoln’s problem with McClellan, it arose from the fact that McClellan would not use the overwhelming force available to him after Lincoln had established clear political objectives. “We have learned the proper lessons of history,” I concluded, “even if some journalists have not.”
As I watched the presidential campaign head into its last month, I realized that George Bush was in a tailspin. The Republican Convention, with its racial overtones and troubling mix of politics and religion, had left a bad taste in the mouth of even middle-of-the-road Americans who might have favored George Bush. His Desert Storm adulation had melted like snow in the spring. The country was not recovering quickly enough from a stubborn recession, and the President was accused of playing Herbert Hoover: economy, heal thyself. Publicity gimmicks did not work, such as having Bush try to show a common touch by trotting down from Camp David to the nearest J.C. Penney’s to buy socks. A troika of Fred Malek, campaign manager, Bob Teeter, campaign chairman, and Bob Mosbacher, finance chairman, had failed to get the Bush reelection effort off dead center. A reluctant Jim Baker had been drafted from the State Department to serve as campaign miracle worker, but was unable to work a miracle. Around the White House, I sensed a mood that the good ship Bush had been holed below the water line. On November 3, the President was defeated by Governor Clinton, by 43 percent to 37.4 percent of the vote, with Ross Perot taking about 19 percent.
I have often wondered if George Bush was well during the campaign. In 1991, before reappointing me as chairman, he had gone into atrial fibrillation, an irregular heart rhythm caused, in his case, by a thyroid imbalance called Graves’ disease. Afterward, he was put on medication, at one point taking five drugs at once. The President himself said that the medicine had caused “a slowing down of the mental processes.” After the dosage was changed, he said he felt completely alert. Still, during the campaign, I saw a passive, sometimes detached George Bush. He was not the same leader who could listen to a free-for-all debate among his advisors, cut through to the essence of the issue, and make a firm decision. The campaign foundered. The appeals of Bill Clinton and Ross Perot to a d
issatisfied electorate, no longer worried about a Cold War or a desert war, proved decisive.
The day after the election, I called the President to tell him I was sorry about the outcome, but win or lose, he had well served our nation and the world.
“Thanks, Colin,” he said. “Still, it hurt. It hurt like hell.”
That night when I got home to Fort Myer, I mentioned this conversation to Alma. “That’s interesting,” she said, “because Barbara Bush just called. They want us to come up and spend the weekend at Camp David.”
“I can’t imagine they would want anybody but family around at this time,” I said.
“And they want us to bring the kids,” Alma added.
I had to give a speech in Chicago that Friday, and on my return late that afternoon, I flew into an airport near Camp David, where a Marine helicopter was standing by. Alma, in the meantime, drove up with Annemarie, Michael, Jane, and our grandson, Jeffrey, the whole Powell clan, except for an absent Linda. On my arrival, the President was waiting by the helipad in a golf cart, as was his habit. My family had just about enough time to settle into one of the cabins when the President and Mrs. Bush collected us for a power walk around the camp perimeter. He and I led the way with the Bush dogs, Millie and Ranger, yapping at our heels.
My American Journey Page 69