Yahoo Movies From South Bronx to the center of power: Colin Powell, a man trusted by presidents and the public
He lived the American dream.
Colin Luther Powell, raised in the South Bronx to Jamaican immigrants, helped shape American national security policy for two decades, breaking ground at each step. He was the first African American to serve as White House national security adviser for one president, as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for another, as secretary of state for a third.
Powell's life was a model for those who believed that aspirations were achievable in America, and that the military could be an avenue to do that.
There were admirers who thought he could have become the first Black president, a prospect he seriously considered when Republicans and Democrats alike courted him as a potential candidate. In an increasingly partisan age, he retained considerable bipartisan appeal. He finished among the top 10 in 16 of the annual Gallup polls identifying the most admired Americans.
On Monday, at age 84, he died at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, of complications of COVID-19, his family announced. He had previously been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a blood cancer making it difficult to fight infection.
The credibility he gained as the nation's top military general and then its top diplomat prompted President George W. Bush to send him to the United Nations in 2003 to make the case for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. During a dramatic address that lasted an hour and 15 minutes, Powell showed photographs, released electronic intercepts and argued that Saddam Hussein had the weapons of mass destruction to threaten the world.
But the long and costly war that followed found no such weapons in Iraq. The U.N. speech was a "blot" on his record, he later told Barbara Walters of ABC News, and one that would be forever painful for him.
Creating the 'Pottery Barn' rule
That said, he was a reassuring figure trusted by a series of presidents and by many Americans. He could be eloquent or plain-spoken, as the occasion required, and he managed to exude both a sense of authority and a sense of humor. He charmed lawmakers in Congress and members of the news media.
He created what journalists dubbed the Powell Doctrine – the imperative of having public support and deploying decisive, overwhelming force in any military action – and of the Pottery Barn rule:
In military affairs, if you break it, you own it.
Powell was born in Harlem to modest circumstances, his father a shipping room foreman and his mother a seamstress. He was an indifferent student at Morris High School in the Bronx and at the City College of New York. Then he joined Army ROTC and found his calling.
He was deployed as a platoon leader in Germany during the Cold War, then to two tours of duty in Vietnam. He commanded a battalion in Korea. At 42, he became the youngest general in the Army at the time. His rise was meteoric, and his public appeal eventually became broader than any general since Dwight D. Eisenhower.
President Ronald Reagan named him his national security adviser. President George H.W. Bush appointed him chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. George W. Bush tapped him as his first Cabinet appointment, as secretary of state.
From the final days of the Cold War to the start of a new era of terrorism after 9/11, Powell helped the nation negotiate complicated and changing times. He played a key role in the most momentous decisions of war and peace, often as a reluctant warrior and sometimes at odds with others.
As chairman of the Joint Chiefs during the Clinton administration, he was famously chided by U.N. ambassador Madeleine Albright for his reticence about approving NATO strikes on Bosnia in 1993. A decade later, as secretary of state in George W. Bush's administration, he repeatedly clashed with Vice President Dick Cheney and others over their early determination to invade Iraq.
Powell described himself as "a problem solver," a pragmatist who had political views but not an ideology. He said he started out voting for Democrats for president – John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter – before crossing the aisle to vote for Reagan in 1980 and later to register as a Republican.
As the 1996 campaign approached, he was divided enough over the possibility of running for president himself that he drafted two speeches but ended up delivering the one declining the contest. Even so, he addressed the Republican national conventions in 1996 and 2000 to cheers.
A break with the GOP
The rise of Donald Trump underscored how much the GOP had changed from Powell's days as a potential contender. Trump derided Powell as "a real stiff" who had led the nation into "disastrous wars." After Trump's unfounded allegations of election fraud and the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, Powell announced he no longer considered himself a Republican.
"Right now I'm just watching my country," he said on CNN, "and not concerned with parties."
In fact, he already had broken with the GOP. In 2008, just weeks before Election Day, he had endorsed Democrat Barack Obama, an embrace that reassured some centrist voters that the young African-American senator from Illinois, who hadn't served in the military, could be trusted as commander in chief.
A role that some thought Powell just might have filled himself.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: How Colin Powell went from Bronx to DC to among most admired Americans
