Powell vs Bush

I used to think of Colin Powell as a good guy; honorable, worthy of respect, and genuinely trying to do the right thing. It's been a little difficult this last year to adhere strictly to that view, but this report helps quite a bit:

Colin Powell appeared on Meet the Press this weekend, and his appearance was marred by his press secretary moving the camera and attempting to end the interview early when Russert, the interviewer, started to ask a hardball question about the fictional Nigerien yellow-cake uranium that Powell used as an excuse to go to war in Iraq.

Most noteworthy about this event was that Powell, rebuked the press-secretary on air, demanded that the camera be trained on him again, and then answered the question, describing the intelligence he'd received as "deliberately misleading."

I still believe that Secretary Powell is doing the best he can. In fact, I think he is a casualty of the Bush adminstration. A Slate article from this February sums up the situation beautifully:

As George Bush's first term nears its end, Powell's tenure as top diplomat is approaching its nadir. On the high-profile issues of the day, he seems to have almost no influence within the administration. And his fateful briefing one year ago before the U.N. Security Council—where he attached his personal credibility to claims of Iraqi WMD—has destroyed his once-considerable standing with the Democrats, not to mention our European allies, most of the United Nations, and the media.

At times, Powell has taken his fate with resigned humor. Hendrik Hertzberg wrote in The New Yorker last year of a diplomatic soiree that Powell attended on the eve of war, at which a foreign diplomat recited a news account that Bush was sleeping like a baby. Powell reportedly replied, "I'm sleeping like a baby, too. Every two hours, I wake up, screaming."

At other times, though, Powell must be frustrated beyond measure. One can imagine the scoldings he takes from liberal friends for playing "good soldier" in an administration that's treated him so shabbily and that's rejected his advice so brazenly...

The decline of Powell's fortunes is a tragic tale of politics: so much ambition derailed, so much accomplishment nullified.

Perhaps his fall is merely a sad consequence of our bitterly partisan "democratic" system. In any case, I hope that Secretary Powell will leave the Bush administration this fall, one way or another.