Much to Colin Powell’s relief, his long-awaited memoir, My American Journey, was finally released in mid-September. He was a more emotional—even prickly—person than he conveyed in speeches or television appearances, and he had found book writing hard and frustrating. Powell had spent 35 years of his adult life in the highly structured and scheduled military environment, and he was unaccustomed to the loneliness and the long, intense task of writing.
“You’re never fucking done!” Powell had said several months earlier in a moment of frustration. “I hate this fucking profession. I am an amateur, and I am leaving the profession. But we are as done as it’s ever going to be. It’s abandoned just about now. One more look and then the hell with it.” He hoped the book conveyed that he had been a bit of a “shithead,” as he put it, in his younger life but had pulled himself up. The book was so much about his march upward that Powell had once seriously entertained the idea of calling his memoir Thank You, America. The title was vetoed by Powell’s advisers and publishers.
My American Journey was a giant hit, the biggest book of the year by far. Crowds jammed his five-week book tour to 25 cities, including London and Paris, which began September 16, 1995. It looked to many, especially the professional political reporting class, like the start-up of a run for the presidency. The intense hoopla, with the poised, well-dressed, articulate man behind the security and under the bright camera lights, looked and felt like a presidential campaign. At the first bookstore, 40 camera crews and a half-mile line of people seeking autographs showed up. Powell personally signed more than 60,000 books over five weeks—a monumental achievement. If he had signed ten books a minute, that would have been roughly 100 hours or four 24-hour days of non-stop book signing. Instead of getting tired, Powell drew energy from the attention.
“That was incredible!” he said, settling into the back of his car after one signing. He had never experienced anything like it, even during the parades after the Desert Storm Gulf War victory in 1991. The war victory had been about much else—General Norman H. Schwarzkopf, President Bush, the troops, erasing the stain of the Vietnam War defeat, national pride. This new wave of attention, however, was personal, exclusively about Powell. No Schwarzkopf, no Bush this time. The sheer power of directed public adoration seemed to boost Powell’s already considerable self-confidence.
“Of course, people would turn out for Charles Manson too,” Powell noted sarcastically in private. Yet he was treated with reverence and ogled over like a rock star. “There he is!” people from the crowds shouted, and those urging him to run for president—rich, poor, and in between—seemed genuine and sincere.
His personal and television appearances reinforced the impression of a man who knew himself and who was at the top of his game. Powell is a big, hefty man with a booming, directed voice. His expressions of approval can be infectious and his disapproval can be chilling. A powerful, natural speaker, Powell does not get tongue-tied and never gives up his advantage over an audience or questioner. Whether in a formal speech or a television interview, he seems on track and in control. He directs outward from the podium or the television, projecting an unusual sense of surefootedness.
Before his book was published, Powell had pretty much decided that if he ran for president it would not be as an independent. That would require money and an organization that he didn’t have and could not possibly put together in the coming months. Besides, how would an independent be able to govern effectively with such a highly partisan Congress? No, Powell figured, if he ran, he would enter the Republican primaries. Though he was no conservative on domestic and social issues, he thought government had grown too big and unwieldy.
But he realized that at the end of the day a decision to run for president would get down to him, not others. What did he want? It was the right question, and one he could afford to ponder after all those years of taking orders. Asking precisely what he himself wanted was a somewhat novel and luxurious exercise. Even the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the post he served from 1989 to 1993, took direct orders from the civilian leadership and had to ask the Secretary of Defense and the president, What do you want?
Powell was basking in his new independence. If he wanted to sleep a little later, read a book, gab on the phone with a few close friends, he did. He watched MTV, laughed hard at Dave Barry’s humor columns, tinkered with one of the classic old Volvos in his garage, attended a professional wrestling match, or just went shopping.
He noted that he was carrying water for no one. “I’m in a wonderful position in life in that I don’t have to appeal to, pander to, appease or try to champion anyone’s position or any party’s position,” Powell said. He was the most popular potential leader in the country in the early fall. A Time magazine and CNN poll showed Powell, running as a Republican, beating Clinton 46 to 38 percent.
Powell’s possible candidacy had already captured two cover stories in Newsweek—the first in October 1994 headlined “The Powell Scenario.” It was a tease and offered no scenario other than the likely impact of his immense popularity. Two Time magazine cover stories had followed, one in July 1995 putting the question in the form of a dare: “If Colin Powell Has the Nerve, He Could Change America.” The story was so fawning that Powell privately declared it “a major barf.” U.S News & World Report restrained itself and ran only a single cover story, “The Man to Watch.”
Powell nonetheless seemed, at times at least, to be keeping his feet on the ground. He knew about the half-life of fame. Close up, he had watched President Bush weather defeat in 1992. Even a president, a good man like Bush, could be forced out and fade away almost overnight. Powell was determined to explore as fully as possible the option of running. That was the key to understanding what was going on, which few did. Powell liked to weigh all reasonable options and not just as an intellectual game. He had trained his mind to approach big problems from all angles. His core work in the Army had been the analysis of options. His usefulness to Presidents Reagan and Bush had been his ability to lay out alternative courses of action sensibly and somewhat dispassionately.
Earlier in the year, Powell had watched some of the Conservative Political Action Conference Convention, a gathering of key conservative activists, on C-SPAN television.
“Can you imagine me standing up and talking to these people?” Powell asked his longtime friend and former aide Marybel Batjer.
“Yes,” Batjer replied, well aware of his adaptability.
“Who needs it?” Powell replied.
During October, in the last week of his book tour, some of his Republican friends were urging him to temper his criticism of the Christian right, a powerful voice in the Republican Party. He had said previously and publicly that the religious right made him a little nervous for pushing their religious agenda into a political agenda. But Powell, after all, agreed with the Christian right’s emphasis on family values. That could be a point of convergence.
As his book tour was ending, Powell appeared on CBS This Morning on Monday, October 16, and sounded this new, more conservative line. He said he favored tax cuts and much of the direction Newt Gingrich was trying to take the party. “And so I am generally in line with the Christian right,” he declared at one point.
Richard Armitage, a 50-year-old former Assistant Secretary of Defense and Powell’s closest personal friend, watched the morning TV show and was shocked. It had come out all wrong, making Powell sound like he was outright pandering to the conservative right.
“How’d it go?” Powell asked Armitage on the phone afterwards.
“Too wordy,” Armitage said, suggesting they talk later. Armitage didn’t want to reveal his shock while Powell was still on the road. Powell shouldn’t lose any of his self-confidence, essential in the long march of book tour and possible candidacy. Armitage was continuing to advise Powell not to run. Even so, he could see the inexorable, almost hydraulic pressures building, and he wanted to assist and counsel his friend in every way if he chose in the end to run.
The next day, October 17, Powell, in Cleveland on his book tour, remarked that the decision might have to be made in his gut. “I need the passion that I had for the military, where every day I got up and said, ‘C’mon, let’s go!’ Thirty-five years of that. Can I transfer that sort of passion over to being a campaigner as well as being an elected politician? That’s probably the most difficult question.”
How was Powell going to find this essential passion and the single-minded drive in the coming weeks? And how would he explain if he suddenly gained that passion effectively overnight? What event—internal or external—might cause such a shift? It was too much distance to travel in a short time.
Powell’s formative experiences in senior roles had not been as a decision maker or even as a military commander in the traditional sense. Powell was an adviser. He had been national security adviser to President Reagan for a year in the late 1980s. It was the old Henry Kissinger job, but Powell was not a broad strategist. His job was to coordinate other opinions and present recommendations. Later, as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Powell was by law the principal military adviser to the president, the Secretary of Defense and the National Security Council. By law he was the most senior military man in the nation, but he was not directly in the chain of command. His function was oversight and communications. He was the liaison between the military commanders in the field and the Secretary of Defense and the White House.
Powell was not accustomed to making hard, final decisions.
After his book tour ended on October 20, Powell imposed a deadline on himself. He would have to decide in the next month and planned to plunge, carefully and step by step, into the depths of the “run” option.
The most insistent of those urging that he run was a troika of self-appointed Powell promoters. All three were devotees of Dwight Eisenhower and the concept of a citizen president who would be above politics. First there was New York public relations veteran John Reagan “Tex” McCrary, who had helped persuade Eisenhower to run in 1952 by staging a series of public appeals. At 85, McCrary now saw Powell as the embodiment of Ike. He bombarded Powell with memorabilia, literature, mail and faxes about Ike, drawing historical parallels with the mushrooming support for Powell’s candidacy. Five months earlier, on May 3, Powell had sent McCrary a handwritten note that was no doubt encouraging: “Dear Tex, Thanks for the bayonet, books, clips, advice, love. You’re a piece of work! Colin.”
Another avid and high-profile Powell promoter was Stephen Ambrose, the historian and Eisenhower biographer, who resigned as director of the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans in the spring of 1995. Ambrose, 59, said he would devote himself full time to launching Powell’s presidential bid and appointed himself a speechwriter for the general he had never met. He had concluded that it was Powell’s duty to run, and began declaring he knew for certain that Powell would run because a man that capable would see his duty—at least as defined by Ambrose. “I’m 99 percent sure he’ll run,” Ambrose said over the summer.
On his own initiative Ambrose crafted a first draft of an announcement speech for Powell but complained to Tex McCrary in a letter that he didn’t know Powell’s views, cadence or language, making it difficult to polish such a speech.
The third Powell promoter was Charles J. Kelly, Jr., a retired investment banker and the head of Citizens for Colin Powell. Kelly had headed the campus Citizens for Eisenhower in 1952 when he was attending Yale Law School. Beginning in late 1994, Kelly had virtually devoted a full year of his life trying to persuade Powell to run for president. Kelly had worked day and night out of his home in Georgetown to try to draft Powell. A ten-page executive summary entitled “National Draft Movement” presented Powell as the “only person” to lead. He was unique and inevitable, the summary stated.
Kelly had not spoken directly with Powell in the previous year but had gleaned through conversations with George Weathersby, a classmate of Powell’s in the 1972–73 White House Fellows program, that Powell’s coyness stemmed from the legal requirements that no money be expended on his behalf until a formal presidential exploratory committee was established. Kelly felt he was acting with Powell’s tacit approval. After all, Powell had the option of passing word that Kelly should stop, and he never had.
Powell invited Kelly to his McLean home for Thursday, October 26. Kelly and Weathersby arrived at Powell’s house about 10 A.M. Powell’s old friend and key political adviser, Kenneth Duberstein, 51, the White House chief of staff in the last year of the Reagan administration, also was there. Powell and Armitage affectionately called Duberstein “Duber-dog” or just “The Dog.” Although he was now one of the most important lobbyists in Washington, Duberstein had little experience in electoral politics.
“You understand I have not made a final decision,” Powell told Kelly and Weathersby, but he wanted to hear where they were and what they had.
Kelly delivered an extensive briefing book outlining the campaign apparatus he had set up in major key primary states for the Republican nomination. He had what he called “cadres” of seriously committed people in each. Since the most precious resource for a late-starting campaign would be Powell’s personal time, he would have to divide it between fund-raising and voter contact, Kelly said. Powell should run on the future of the country, focusing on young people, he recommended. Major events should be scheduled at universities. He explained that either he or his cadres had talked with the governors or Republican state chairmen in key states.
“All agree on one thing,” Kelly said, “that Dole cannot win the general election against Clinton.”
“Yes,” Powell said, “I understand that his support is very shallow. I hear that from others.”
Kelly went through more of the campaign mechanics and outlined a possible budget of somewhere between $8.5 and $12 million for the period up to the end of the California primary at the end of March 1996.
They reviewed the poll numbers.
Kelly recommended an announcement at Powell’s alma mater, City College of New York (CCNY), in about four weeks, the week of Thanksgiving.
After more than two hours, Kelly left, elated and absolutely certain that Powell would run. All of Powell’s questions had been directed at “how,” and he had never introduced the word “if.” The morning had been all positive, and Kelly felt that Powell was very impressed with their work.
Powell realized at once that this was not an A-team of top professionals, not even close to what a presidential campaign would obviously require.
Over in Dole headquarters, Scott Reed was increasingly worried that Powell might jump in. Reed had a private, back-channel relationship with Ken Duberstein. The two talked once a week, trying to smoke out information, send signals and pick up intelligence from other campaigns.
“If he doesn’t run,” Duberstein had told Reed in one of their phone calls, “I’m with you guys.”
Reed wondered what to do. Powell was getting unprecedented favorable news coverage beckoning him into the race. “All these blowjob interviews all the time from everybody,” Reed said. At the same time, a reporter for the Public Broadcasting System had interviewed Dole and had asked Dole mostly about bad things—dyeing his hair and his divorce.
“This is one of the things there’s nothing we can do anything about,” Reed finally concluded. He developed a three-point plan if Powell got in the race. First, Dole would welcome Powell and not criticize him. Second, they would stick to their own game plan. Third, they would work to avoid any defections from their endorsers and supporters among the high-visibilty senators, governors and other local state officials.
Late in October, Nelson Warfield had come to see Reed. Ronald Lauder, the wealthy cosmetics heir, unsuccessful candidate for mayor of New York City, and Warfield’s ex-boss, had said that Powell had called him the night before about 11 P.M. to see if Lauder would be available to raise money for a possible Powell campaign.
Reed believed that Lauder was a political joke and couldn’t raise two nickels in a presidential campaign, but the direct contact by Powell was a dangerous sign. Reed decided to stir up a little trouble and had the word passed to two reporters about Powell’s call to Lauder. The leak would possibly give Powell some second thoughts, Reed hoped, and show the general that if he ran he wouldn’t be able to do much in private. It also would perhaps give Powell some doubts about Duberstein, who had urged the fund-raising calls.
After the inquiries about his calls to Lauder came into his office, Powell called Lauder. Why did you talk to anybody? Wasn’t this supposed to be between us?
Lauder was somewhat dumbfounded and explained that he had just talked to some of his money guys to test their reaction.
The news stories of the Powell-Lauder call filled the vacuum of expectations about Powell’s plans.
Reed was delighted with the stories. He considered Lauder a lightweight, and Powell’s outreach made the general look like he was scrambling. On Friday, October 27, Reed talked with Duberstein.
“We had a better week than you did,” Reed said.
“I don’t know what he’s going to do,” Duberstein said, repeating his promise to support Dole if Powell said no.
Reed wanted to keep the heat on Powell in every possible way. Lacy had some new confidential polling data showing that in a twoway Republican race just between Dole and Powell, Dole would win, 42 to 29 percent. In addition, the polling showed that more than half the Republicans thought Dole was philosophically conservative while nearly half thought Powell was moderate or liberal. That meant, Lacy believed, that Dole would defeat Powell in a Republican nomination fight. Lacy went to see Warren Rudman, a longtime Powell friend.
“You’ve got credibility with Powell,” Lacy said to Rudman. “Would you consider taking this data and sharing it with Powell so that he understands?” Maybe the data would discourage Powell. The Dole campaign didn’t want to deliver the information in a threatening way or with an attitude of “we’ll kick your butt,” Lacy said. “Just as a friend say you’re going to have trouble beating Dole in a primary situation.”
Rudman called Ken Duberstein, who thanked him for offering to share the poll. They were looking at their own polling data, Duberstein said politely, and Rudman didn’t need to send it over.
Armitage spoke with Powell regularly, sometimes two, three or more times a day. He could hear that his friend was seized with the weight of the decision. Powell was edgy. He was wrestling and admitted experiencing tremendous moodswings, even violent shifts in emotion. Quite a roll-ercoaster, he said. The expectations and the enthusiasm of others got to him. Some mornings, Powell said, he thought it might be yes. He would feel good for the first 15 minutes of the day, and then it would be downhill. On the mornings he started out thinking it would be no, he felt good all day. A sign perhaps. But then he thought about the word used by the organizers of the various draft movements—“duty.” He believed he knew what the concept meant. But where was his obligation? Armitage noted that if Powell ran, he would have to feel morally superior to the opposition—Clinton or Dole or whomever. It would help to dislike the opposition. But Powell didn’t declare enemies very easily. He was friend to the world, even liked and saw the strengths in Clinton and Dole, though he knew their weaknesses.
“These people, you know,” Armitage said at one point of the potential opponents, “they’re not Saddam Hussein.”
On Wednesday, November 1, Powell asked Armitage and Duberstein to lunch to discuss his options.
Powell was in a very positive frame of mind, seemingly leaning toward running. Duberstein had researched the federal election laws outlining how a presidential exploratory committee could be set up.
Powell had some questions. What is an exploratory committee? How does it work? What do you have to do to set one up?
When it was explained, Powell said that he wanted Armitage and Duberstein to be co-chairmen.
Armitage asked if that would be the best use of his time. After all, he knew nothing about electoral politics. How about a role as foreign policy adviser—his specialty? Wouldn’t people with well-known names and high political visibility be better?
This would only be for ten days, a bridge before he set up a full-fledged committee, Powell said. With the exploratory committee he could legally begin to raise money.
Turning to the question of where he might announce for president, Powell said that he was considering CCNY, his alma mater.
Next, they turned to the question of the campaign theme. They discussed economic development and racial healing, but the notions were general and vague. What would be driving the race? Could it be integrity? Coherence? Strength? The type of people now in government and the obvious case that Powell was different?
Armitage could see that Powell wasn’t clear on why he might run or on exactly what he might want to do as president.
Powell asked if they thought he would win the New Hampshire primary. So much would hinge on the first state with actual ballot voting. No Republican had ever been nominated in modern times without winning New Hampshire. He didn’t want to start with a second-or third-place finish, he noted. “How do you think I’ll do?”
“I think you’ll win New Hampshire,” Armitage replied. Sure, Powell could do it. “You can go up there and slog around.” But Armitage didn’t want to think in terms of the pieces of a possible campaign, the details, when the most important question hadn’t been answered. He turned a little emotional. “I don’t think you’re ready for this,” he said emphatically.
Powell didn’t respond.
Duberstein said he also thought Powell would win New Hampshire.
Powell was moving through the parts. What about the money?
They noted he was way behind.
Powell was not so worried about the money. He sensed it would come in. He had hardly met a businessman or CEO who had not offered to help raise money beyond the $1,000 maximum individual contribution by soliciting others to give, the key multiplier in all successful fund-raising.
Armitage left shortly after 2 P.M. He was quite amazed. For the first time, he concluded that Powell was likely to run. Armitage liked to put percentage odds on decisions or outcomes. He thought Powell seemed to be 70 to 90 percent leaning toward it.
Duberstein arranged for Haley Barbour, the chairman of the Republican Party, to come to Powell’s Virginia office. Most of the other candidates only scored a little breakfast with juice and muffins at Barbour’s office so Barbour, a jolly Mississipian, could keep his stance of neutrality.
As he had with all candidates, Barbour said his job was to ensure the playing field was level, that the winner of the Republican nomination would have the chairman and the party’s full support, and of course Powell was welcome to the party, welcome to run.
By Thursday, November 2, Powell’s office in Alexandria was increasingly besieged. Fielding the phone calls, running the office, and attempting to manage the various tidal waves was a neat, compact, well-groomed man with thick, graying hair, a mustache and a cheerful smile.
“This is Bill Smullen,” he said into the phone, carefully and politely identifying himself. Smullen, 54, was Powell’s chief of staff, executive assistant and press spokesman. He had served 30 years as an Army officer, and he had retired as a full colonel in 1993 with Powell. For all four years of Powell’s chairmanship of the JCS, Smullen had been his personal press spokesman. He was the only person Powell had hired from his staff when he retired.
Smullen had been there since the beginning of Powell’s post-retirement life and had set up a small office in a seventh-floor suite of the Armed Forces Benefit Association in Alexandria, Virginia. Smullen had read, helped edit and fact-checked six drafts of My American Journey. He had been hard on the drafts and on Powell a number of times, pointing out parts he found too self-serving. In the acknowledgments, Powell called Smullen his “close friend” and “my confidant and protector.” Smullen had spent months planning and orchestrating the book tour and had been at Powell’s side during the entire five weeks on the road.
Low key but also a careful advocate, Smullen was one of the breed of military press officers schooled in the lessons of Vietnam. He had learned that the essence of sound media relations had to be persistent, aggressive realism. The message could barely get an inch ahead of the ground truth.
Smullen felt Powell’s decision was almost getting down to a coin toss. The expectation level was so high as to be palpable in the office and seemingly about the country. Smullen could see these expectations bearing down on Powell, overpowering him. Since most requests to Powell funneled through Smullen, he saw that too many people were looking out for themselves, overlooking Powell’s real interest and taking advantage of the man, who was nice to hundreds of friends and acquaintances.
That afternoon, Powell came into his Alexandria office and called Smullen in to solicit his views.
“You’ve left me alone on this and I appreciate it,” Powell said. “You know me as well as anyone. I value your opinion. I want to hear what you think.”
Smullen said that he had sat at the information crossroads—the book tour, fielding calls from reporters from all over the country and the world. He had picked up the phone from hundreds of average people calling in their encouragement, sifted through the bags of mail, seen the instant, near-electric surge of strangers when they heard of his association with Powell. “Sir, the support is real, genuine, heartfelt,” Smullen said. And, he said, you have a chance to win—the Republican nomination and the presidency.
“I think I know you as well as anyone,” Smullen said. “I know what is important to you, not for you. Family is the most important thing, and if it was not number one for you, you would not be the person I know.” Smullen was aware that Alma strongly opposed a candidacy. Her unyielding opposition had to be given something more than serious consideration, Smullen said. He reminded Powell that he had said publicly that Alma’s views would count 51 percent in the overall decision. With all Powell had said about the primacy of family, Smullen felt he did not have to add the implicit thought—if you are true to yourself, Alma’s desires have to be given that 51 percent.
Alma suffered from depression and had undergone successful medical treatment for years. It was not a family secret. This had been known among Powell’s friends and many in the media. When it had appeared recently in published news articles on Powell, the descriptions had been straightforward, not sensationalized. Neither Powell nor Alma had taken offense.
Smullen had been saving up his thoughts for months about whether Powell should run. “You’ve got to understand that Alma will have to be out there for 12 months,” Smullen said. She would be expected to campaign. Elizabeth Dole had just taken a leave of absence as head of the American Red Cross so she could devote herself full time to stumping for her husband. Alma would be uncomfortable even in a dramatically scaled back version of personal campaigning. “Alma would not be a happy camper,” Smullen said.
Powell laughed heartily and darkly. He understood the depth of the understatement. Stress could be the worst thing for a person with depression.
“Sir, you would surrender your privacy and the privacy of your family in a way that even you don’t realize,” Smullen said. They had seen it in the current frenzy of media coverage—unbelievable already. But that was not the real thing. That was just the warm-up act. Declare his candidacy and the media which had been widely criticized for puffing Powell would go to work with microscopes, shovels and every other instrument of scrutiny known to man. It could be like nothing anyone had ever seen before.
To illustrate, Smullen handed Powell a newspaper article published that day, by Martin Fletcher of The Times (London). The story referred to “uncorroborated rumors” about the lifestyle of someone associated with Powell. Of course, by their very nature rumors are uncorroborated. And in this case, apparently no effort had been made to check. There were no details in the story. Probably only a British or tabloid newspaper would print such a story. Smullen didn’t even care about this particular article, didn’t care about someone’s personal lifestyle, thought it didn’t matter, wasn’t relevant. But if Powell ran, that would only be the start. The stories any publication chose to run could make their way into the mainstream media. Smullen was only raising it in the context of privacy.
Powell was grim. He didn’t believe the rumor was true.
The point, Smullen said, was that the truth was often the least important and least relevant element in some news coverage.
Smullen wanted to finish. Maybe they were points only a fellow career military officer could make—the Army was like family, the brotherhood, both Powell and Smullen knew. Running for president was not something Powell had always wanted, Smullen noted, or something he had worked for all his life. It was only recently considered. “How do we get from here to there without a structure?” Smullen asked. In the military, there were always clearly defined functions—someone in charge of personnel, logistics, communications, intelligence, strategy, plans and policy, and operations. They only had Powell, Smullen and one other person in the office.
Powell’s style, Smullen noted, had been to keep his views and intentions to himself, gather information from dozens and dozens of people personally. The result was that there was no central sharing point or organization or structure other than Powell’s own mind.
A week earlier, Smullen had gone out with Powell’s permission to look for possible office space for a campaign headquarters. He had found a whole floor that would be available in their current building. But then, Smullen said, he wondered who would fill it? The hoards of volunteers who seemed to be clamoring to go to work knew less about politics than they did. At best they would have a rocky start instead of a brisk start. Powell probably would not be able to have the immediate successes that everyone—supporters, the press—would anticipate. “Can we deliver the goods?” Smullen asked. “Frankly, I’m uncomfortable with our ability to do that.”
Nodding and attentive, Powell encouraged his friend to continue.
Should Powell run, he might become the instant front-runner if the polls were to be believed, Smullen said. If not the front-runner, he would surely be watched the most and covered the most by the press. He could get as much media attention as all the other candidates taken together. Each step, each misstep, each non-step would be a story. Overall the immense expectations probably could not be met.
You need a political philosophy to run for president, Smullen said. You have to go beyond affirmative action and gun control and being pro-choice. What would you want to do as president? What program would you want to carry out? For example, one of the television stations recently had run a story about the peanut farmers being upset with the government. What was Powell’s position on the peanut farmers? It seemed small and incidental, but the issue was very important in parts of Georgia, for instance. “Where’s the enormous staff to work out your positions on this?” Smullen said. “It’s nonexistent.” No doubt there was a logical Colin Powell position on peanut farmers that was consistent with his other positions. But it would take time and people.
“You’re right,” Powell said. “I’m not steeped in these issues.”
In addition, Smullen pointed out that if Powell chose to run he might win the nomination, be elected and then reelected. So he was potentially making a decision about the next nine years of his life—in essence the remaining portion of his working life up to age 67. Was this what he wanted to do?
There was that question again.
Smullen did not believe that ambiguous advice or carefully listed pros and cons would be of as much value as a bottom-line recommendation. He was willing to declare his opinion.
“If you’re asking should you run or should you not,” Smullen said, “I’m saying you shouldn’t.”
“Everything you say is true,” Powell replied.
Smullen said that he thought there would be other ways to serve the country, and he personally hoped that Powell would be Secretary of State some day. Powell would know how to do that job and was probably the most thoroughly prepared person in the world for the post.
Powell soon gathered up his things and left the office for home.
It was their first meeting in over six years at which Smullen had talked more than Powell.
That day a dozen leaders of the anti-tax and anti-abortion right wing of the Republican Party held a press conference and tried to scare Powell out of the race. They said Powell was an insider Washington celebrity, a liberal and a member of the establishment who didn’t belong in their revolutionary party. Leading conservative Paul Weyrich said that Powell was like a Gilbert and Sullivan opera character who had risen to “ruler of the Queen’s Navy by polishing the handles on the big brass front door.”
Powell did not have a chance to watch it on C-SPAN, and when he later received a report from Armitage, he said he was amused, astonished and a little peeved. But Powell was truly furious that some of those leveling the severest criticism of his military career had themselves never served.
In the evening, House Speaker Newt Gingrich went into his secret agent mode and didn’t tell his staff where he was going. He arrived at Powell’s house for a two-hour meeting. Providing a lecture on history, politics, Republicans and the future of modern civilization, Gingrich said Powell was more than welcome to run. But the Speaker had one central piece of advice: “You’ve got to think about it as a human being.”
When Gingrich left, he had no idea what Powell might decide.
Friday morning, November 3, Alma wanted to talk to her husband. She had not received a clear answer from him. She wanted a clear answer. They had an extended quiet discussion at the kitchen table away from the phones and hubbub, advisers and politicians knocking at the door.
Alma repeated that she was opposed. She would not yield. It would be the wrong thing for him, for the family, for everyone. Perhaps it would turn into a disaster. She had meant it when she said publicly that she feared he would be shot.
They spoke seriously and intensely.
At the end, Powell knew that Alma would not budge. She had been consistent. His partner in life for 32 years was absolute in her opposition. As a practical matter, would running be possible? Would it be right in the face of this? His two daughters were also opposed. And though the temptation was there, Powell still had not found that essential burning passion and certainly not in the quantity to outweigh Alma’s passionate feelings. The fiery enthusiasm was from others. It was not his. And at the end of the day, it had to be his. The decision to run had to come from the inside.
Powell stepped back from his own situation. The political atmosphere had become superheated, principally because there wasn’t much else to grab attention. The celebrated O. J. Simpson trial was over. The race for the Republican nomination seemed stalled. The media fires were looking for pure oxygen. Reporters were looking for stories, and he had provided one for the last several months. If he had learned one thing from his military service, it was that you had to know what you were doing before battle and before the curtain went up.
After 8:30 A.M., Powell called Smullen, who was at the Alexandria office.
“How are things going?” Powell asked, always wanting the latest.
Fine, Smullen said.
“I’ll be down this afternoon,” Powell said. “I’ve come to a decision. I’m not going to proceed.”
Smullen was relieved. But he quickly realized they would have to tell the world and they would have to find a way to say it exactly right. Sooner rather than later. “There is an engine running out there and we’ve got to shut it off,” Smullen noted.
Pledging Smullen to secrecy, Powell added, “You’re one of few people who know.”
Powell spoke with Armitage and explained that the decision was heading way, way south. He said he was worried about what the reaction might be when he announced it was a no. There would be problems. He did not want to be seen as a quitter. He also didn’t want to be seen as cynical about the country or politics. A lot of people might be angry.
“Your pants are falling down,” said Armitage, noting that Powell had lost weight, close to eight pounds. “You’re not sleeping.” No one could allege that Powell had not given it the most serious consideration. After their talk, Armitage realized it was 98 to 99 percent over. What a swing from 48 hours ago when Powell seemed 70 to 90 percent leaning toward it!
Powell began trying to draft a statement. He decided to tell it the way it was. Family and an absence of passion prevented him from entering the race. He took the draft into his Alexandria office and met with Smullen. “These are the questions I think you’re going to get,” Smullen said, suggesting they go through some of them and review his answers when he made his announcement.
As they practiced the question and answer session, Smullen could see that the decision was still weighing on Powell very much. He was as tired and drawn as Smullen had ever seen him, even during the most tense moments in the Gulf War.
What about the vice-presidency? Smullen asked.
Powell said he didn’t want to be vice president and wouldn’t run for the office.
Later, Smullen returned to the vice-presidency question. What if the circumstances changed? They always did. What if the Republican presidential nominee came and pleaded?
“Hell no,” Powell said adamantly.
The next day, Saturday, Powell checked in with Smullen.
“How do you feel?” Smullen asked. “No second thoughts?”
“Nope,” Powell said.
Powell had to go to Florida to give a speech to Pontiac dealers, and on returning he learned that cameramen and reporters had staked out his house.
Armitage called that afternoon with the first report that Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had been shot. Rabin died shortly afterwards.
That day Alma offered a simple five-word statement to the family, “This ain’t going to happen.”
Yeah, Powell said, but inside he was still bouncing around.
The bouncing stemmed from his nature, his capacity to see all the sides, the trained option-study habits of a lifetime. There was a doubleness to Powell. He was a passionate person who could also be a cool analyst. He was sometimes profane but also the one to say, “Yes, sir, Mr. President.” Powell was a black man up from Harlem and the South Bronx, and as such he retained a kind of vital outsider status. But also he was a Washington insider. He could be open, almost confessional, but also he was very public relations conscious and could close down. There was a core of compassion, even a genuine tenderness to him, but he could be hard. It was Powell who had stood before the map during the Gulf War in his full uniform and declared his strategy for defeating the Iraqi Army: “First we are going to cut it off, and then we are going to kill it.”
Powell loved the system, but he could be deeply skeptical at moments about the system and its leaders, especially when it came to race. He loved to work with his mind, but also with his hands. He could be a tough realist, but also a dreamer. He would tell it like it was, but he also could tell it how the listener, especially a president, might want to hear it.
He had worked closely with Presidents Reagan, Bush and Clinton during the moments of some of their hardest decisions. In some respects, Powell had been training for the job of president. He could do the job, he felt. But the politics and the process of getting there were foreign and largely unknown to him. He had seen how Clinton’s instincts just hadn’t worked in foreign and defense policy. They didn’t apply very well, and his own might not apply to that strange, perhaps awful business of campaigning for the presidency.
On Sunday, November 5, Smullen arrived at the Alexandria office. It was quiet. He was jittery. Lots to do—too much. This could be handled badly. He checked in with Powell to see if there were any overwhelming second thoughts. Nope. Okay, Smullen said. They needed to move out smartly on an announcement of non-candidacy. Very smartly. Since the upcoming Tuesday was a local election day, and Friday was a holiday, Smullen had recommended Wednesday. Powell had initially said, “Let me get back to you on that,” but had later agreed.
We need a place to make the announcement, Smullen said.
Yeah, check it out, Powell said.
Chuck Kelly, founder of Citizens for Colin Powell, had been expecting a phone call from Powell that Sunday to get the final go-ahead. Nothing. Duberstein and Armitage had been telling the press to expect a decision from Powell very soon, and media calls to Kelly were running about 200 a day. New Hampshire Governor Steve Merrill was supposedly expecting a signal from Powell too, and word was coming back to Kelly that Merrill and his staff were upset because the general had not sent one. Kelly ran into Duberstein at a party. They rolled their eyes at each other. Kelly was concerned. They should be working. The delay, silence and the assassination of the Israeli prime minister were very ominous.
That evening, Tex McCrary, the most unabashedly persistent of those pushing Powell, faxed Powell a letter at home, addressing Powell as “Mr. President” and Alma as “First Lady.” He said, “Most relevant tonight, as I watch CNN’s live coverage of the million mourners moving slowly past the soldier’s coffin in which Prime Minister Rabin lies in state…a soldier/peacemaker like you.”
Tex continued, “I have never wondered or asked you, ‘Will you run for president?’ I have always known you would, because you must.
“You are the only leader left…and good buddy, you have passed your Point of No Return…D-Day…H-Hour…Moment of TRUTH!”
“Eisenhower was an idea whose time had come—so are you.”
McCrary also suggested City College as the site for the announcement. “Bet Bill Smullen will fill the place with worldwide ‘must’ media.”
The next morning, Monday, November 6, Smullen began searching for a place Powell could hold his press conference. In Alexandria, the Old Colony Inn near the office had a convention booked in its hall all week. The nearby Holiday Inn didn’t have a parking lot big enough for television to bring in the trucks for live coverage.
Powell viewed his statement with increasing concern. He had already called Armitage and asked him to come by for a drink that night. Armitage was scheduled to play in a basketball game. It is really important, Powell said.
Armitage showed up with a few thoughts written out. Duberstein also came. Powell called Smullen about 7:30 P.M.
“We need one final meeting,” Powell explained. But it would take Smullen 45 minutes to get there. “Well, this isn’t going to be very long,” Powell said. They got him on the speakerphone.
Powell went over his statement. First, it was crucial to express how honored he had felt by the outpouring of support, find the right language to express thanks and humility. Second, he needed to declare his optimism about the country and about politics. Third, he wanted to announce that he was joining the Republican Party. Fourth, he wanted to rule out the vice-presidency and say he would not seek any office in 1996.
Alma joined them for an hour of the two-hour meeting.
At one point, Duberstein asked, just to be sure, “Is it over?”
“It’s over,” Powell answered.
Tuesday morning Duberstein drove into the wide courtyard of the Armed Forces Benefit Association, a striking new red brick building, and determined that it would be fine for an outdoor announcement.
Smullen called Powell. The weather was going to be sunny but it would be in the 40s and windy. Everyone would freeze, and the wind would howl in the microphones. So Smullen arranged to rent the ballroom of the Ramada Inn the next afternoon at 3 P.M., pledged the manager to secrecy and negotiated the usual $1,000 rental fee down to $250. A couple of security professionals volunteered to help.
The next morning at 8 A.M., Smullen began making calls to the media saying that Powell would have a press conference at 3 P.M. at the Alexandria Ramada Inn.
Scott Reed was continuing to do everything to thwart Powell, who was dominating the campaign news. A recent poll in New Hampshire had Powell at an incredible 33 percent to Dole’s 18 percent among likely Republican primary voters. After much courting, Reed had finally persuaded Governor Steve Merrill to endorse Dole. Merrill, incredibly popular in the first primary state, was thought to be the grand endorsement prize. Reed wanted to get the formal news out as soon as possible to lock it in and send another deterring signal to Duberstein and Powell.
Reed arranged for Merrill and Dole to announce the governor’s endorsement on Wednesday, November 8, in New Hampshire.
On Wednesday morning, Dole was flying up to New Hampshire with some of his key backers from Congress, including Representative Bill Zeliff, the New Hampshire Republican who chaired the Dole campaign in the state. Dole and Zeliff were chatting in the back of the plane when Nelson Warfield came back to report that he had heard Powell was going to make some kind of announcement at a hotel in Alexandria, Virginia.
“What do you think that means?” Dole gruffly asked.
Warfield said he didn’t think anyone would announce he was running for President of the United States from an Alexandria hotel, so it looked like a no.
Soon Warfield reported in again. Tim Russert of NBC was telling people he had it on good authority that Powell was going to say no.
Zeliff instantly clapped his hands over his head. “This is the greatest day of your campaign,” Zeliff said.
Dole sat quietly with a thin smile on his face.
Earlier in the day, Powell got a haircut but he didn’t have time to shampoo afterwards so his hair stood up more than usual and he joked that he looked a little like Don King, the boxing promoter whose hair stood straight up several inches.
He and Alma arrived ten minutes early at the Ramada. The only place to wait was the kitchen. Emotions were heavy.
“Maybe we can stay for dinner,” Smullen joked to Alma, pointing to trays of salmon laid out in the kitchen and trying to lighten things up as much as possible.
She smiled.
“How do you feel?” Smullen asked.
“Wonderful.”
“You happy?” Smullen inquired.
She smiled again. “I’m the happiest woman in the world.”
At the press conference Powell, with Alma at his side, read an 11-paragraph statement with the key line right in the middle, at the end of paragraph six, “I will not be a candidate for president or for any other elective office in 1996.” He said he based his decision on “the welfare of my family” and the absence of “a commitment and a passion to run the race.”
He and Alma took questions for more than 20 minutes. It was widely seen and described as a gracious and masterful performance. But Powell was tired and spent.
At the end of the press conference, Powell looked out into the audience and noticed Chuck Kelly, the man who had spent a full year trying to draft him. There had been no time to call Kelly in advance. While leaving the podium Powell made his right hand into an imaginary phone with thumb at his ear and little finger at his mouth, signaling Kelly that he would phone him later.
That night at Powell’s house, the relief and drop in tension were palpable. Powell made his calls, including the one to Chuck Kelly.
“I know you’re disappointed,” Powell said. He almost apologized, thanking Kelly for the confidence, but repeating the reasons he had stated—family and the lack of passion.
On November 8, after Powell’s announcement, Clinton decided not to say anything publicly. He had heard all the analysis from his staff. Stephanopoulos had argued that it would be the best thing in the world for Powell to get into the race. Powell would probably lose and that would give Clinton a single talking point election: the Republicans killed Powell, they’re too extreme.
McCurry, taking a different tack, had argued that it might be a good thing also because Clinton was always best when he faced a real challenge. And a Powell candidacy would make it difficult for the Republicans. Powell was black, his parents had been Jamaican immigrants, and as one of the heroes of the Gulf War he was a symbol of internationalism. McCurry argued that if Powell was in the Republican race it would be difficult for Republicans to run on race-baiting, racial quotas, immigration and isolationism.
“Who knows what it means anyhow?” Clinton said that day, shrugging his shoulders. He wanted to find some way to use Powell to improve race relations and wondered about setting up a commission or task force that would include Powell.
In the following days and weeks, as various people offered their postmortems, analysis and speculation, Powell realized he would not be totally free. He had entered into a political mythology of sorts, if only a minor chapter. And political myth has a staying power and a curiosity. His refusal seemed contrary to the great American drive. Was it plausible that someone would say no to such potential power for the stated reasons? “I just told it the way it was,” Powell said afterwards. “People are rooting around trying to find some smoking gun. There isn’t any. People will root around. No. You heard it.
“I’ve been as honest as I can on this. And people will always want to look for more, and they’re welcome to do so, but you heard it.”
Later, Powell filmed a public service announcement for the United Negro College Fund as part of his new private life and continued to give speeches around the country. Hundreds of letters were coming into the office each day. He and Smullen threw themselves at the mail as the new project. They doubled the size of the office. Powell was trying to answer the mail very carefully. Maybe it wasn’t that important, but he felt some deep connection with these people. The mail was there, and it was something to do.
“It was never a yes,” he said. “And everybody thinks that I was in a binary situation where I had to bawl my brains out or go into politics, and I never saw it that way.”
Even before he decided, Powell had taken to introducing Alma only half-jokingly as “Mrs. Sherman,” alluding to William Tecumseh Sherman, the Civil War hero who emphatically refused to run for president with the famous statement, “I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected.”
Now, as a full private citizen, Powell was reading the letters of General Sherman and found them relevant. He was astonished that the professional encouragers and supporters had badgered Sherman for nearly 20 years after the Civil War. Did it never stop?
He read Sherman’s May 28, 1884, letter to a friend carefully. “My career has been all my family and friends could ask,” Sherman had written. “We are now in a good house of our own choice.
“Military men have an absolute right to rest and to demand that the men who have been schooled in the arts and practice of peace shall now do their work equally well.
“I have my personal affairs in a state of absolute safety and comfort. I owe no man a cent, have no expensive habits, envy no man his wealth or power.” Sherman said he would “account myself a fool, a madman, an ass, to embark anew, at sixty-five years of age, in a career that may become at any moment tempest-tossed by perfidy, the defalcation, the dishonesty or neglect of any single one of a hundred thousand subordinates utterly unknown to the President of the United States.
“The civilians of the United States should and must buffet with this thankless office, and leave us old soldiers to enjoy the peace we fought for, and think we earned.”
Powell was amazed. Sherman had covered every point. It was a perfect way to say what Powell had been feeling: Leave me alone. “My God,” Powell thought, “I’m a reincarnation.”