Powell’s legacy of decency and integrity

For its 1996 convention, the Republican Party was anxious to avoid the acrimonious tone of its gathering four years earlier. So the GOP turned to its most respected voice of moderation and reconciliation: Gen. Colin Powell. He did not disappoint.

“Yes, we Republicans have leaders and principles that are worthy of our aspirations,” he said. “Let us take our case to our fellow citizens with respect for their intelligence and fairmindedness. Let us debate our differences with the Democrats strongly, but with the civility and absence of acrimony that the American people long for in our political debate.”

Stare at Powell’s words just 15 years later and they feel like a relic from a lost era. Civility? Longing? Absence of acrimony? Those ideals have been cudgeled to death by Facebook, Twitter, and a panicked and partisan media that, as Jon Stewart aptly noted on CNN Sunday, competes by exposing the “emotional fault lines that occur in society.”

In that speech, Powell was, in fact, looking forward to the approaching millennium. He spoke of how America stood on the eve of a new century that, he said, was “likely to be filled with “change, anxiety, excitement and opportunity.”

He surely did not anticipate the accuracy of his first two descriptors, which so far have squelched the latter two.

Nor could he have imagined that he would embody so many of the risk factors that would pit him against the fatal headwinds of a global plague.

Powell was male, Black, 84, and suffering from cancer, all of which combined to make him vulnerable to COVID-19, even with vaccination, which has limitations for those with comorbidities.

Powell will be seen as one of the most prominent COVID-19 deaths. The son of immigrants was the first Black U.S. secretary of state, serving from 2001 to 2005, national security adviser from 1987 to 1989, and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1989 to 1993.

He received two Presidential Medals of Freedom and a Congressional Gold Medal as well as numerous other honors. He led a life of achievement, dignity, patriotism and respect for service.

His values, he told the 1996 convention audience, had been reinforced by his parents: “Integrity, kindness and godliness, they taught us, were right. Lying, violence, intolerance, crime and drugs were wrong and, even worse than wrong, in my family, they were shameful. We were taught that hard work and education were the keys to success in this country.”

If you teach your kid to value integrity and abhor lies, you also teach them to admit when they are wrong, a skill that eludes so many of those who pursue politics. Not so Powell. In 2003, he made the case for war against Iraq, drawing on U.S. intelligence agencies’ faulty findings on Iraq’s purported weapons of mass destruction program.

That United Nations testimony could be seen as a tragic mistake with horrific global consequences. Many might argue he should have resigned instead of being party to a falsehood. Or, he could be seen as a loyal military man supporting his commander in chief, as he had sworn to do. Either way, Powell did not shirk his responsibility. “It has blotted my record,” he said in 2011, “but — you know — there’s nothing I can do to change that blot. All I can say is that I gave it the best analysis that I could.”

Those who see nuance and complexity where others just see a chance to make their cases are doomed to have enemies on both sides of the political spectrum. So it went with Powell, a man of immense integrity who ended up bruised by the machinations of the country for which he had so much love.

In that 1996 speech, Powell also said: “We were taught by my parents to always, always, always believe in America.”

He was stuck with that, whether he liked it or not. Wise heads and kind hearts can see how much he achieved, how much he gave and how apt it now would be for America to work on its acrimony.