Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, October 8, 1993 TAG: 9401140012
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Paxton Davis
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Hardly a dozen years back, the voters of the United States, confusing his heroic screen roles with the dirty reality of governing an immense and complex country, raised movie actor Ronald Reagan, whose ideas were little better than the idle fancies of a specialist in fantasy, to the presidency.
History is already showing - not a quarter of a century afterward, but now - that Reagan's fancies were both idiotic and dangerous to the economic and civic health of the nation.
Now it is Powell's turn, and, though one hopes he will find his post-martial satisfactions in other pursuits, it would be premature to predict that his head will not be turned by the attention of the polls and the mob. Few have been able to resist it.
Powell, retired last week as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, won the nation's highest military post after an unblemished career as an Army officer who'd commanded troops in Vietnam, served important commands at home and abroad, and even worked as national security adviser to President Reagan. He also presided over the Gulf War, though not as a field commander. That task was left to the bumptious, temperamental Norman Schwartzkopf.
Schwartzkopf did not exactly quit while he was ahead, but he retired while still the darling of the public, made what is probably a fortune from his autobiography, appeared regularly on television talk shows and had the pleasure, which quickly faded, of hearing himself boomed as a presidential possibility. Subsequent complaints that he was a loudmouth bully who concealed evidence of military blunders tarnished his reputation, of course, but by then he was out.
Perhaps Powell has more going for him. He is a product of R.O.T.C., thus not a member of the West Point Old Boys' Club. He has made few public mistakes. He looks good, speaks well and has what white people most admire in a black man: short hair, a neat appearance and a modest demeanor. He is the very model of politeness.
But he is also the very model of a model military bureaucrat. He has shown little Army distinction beyond the ability to please his superiors, to play by the arcane rules the Army implicitly handed down to those wishing to advance, and to remain cool under public scrutiny.
Earlier this year, however, he also revealed something less admirable: He went public, to great acclaim, with his objection to President Bill Clinton's intention to remove all impediments to the service of gay Americans in the armed forces.
This no doubt enhanced Powell's reputation for holding conventional opinions, but it flew in the face of both tradition - which requires that serving officers object in private, then do what presidents decide - and Powell's own prior knowledge that a long-term Pentagon study concluded that the exclusion of gays serves no purpose.
Finally, no one knows what Powell's politics really are. Is he a Democrat or a Republican? What does he think about the driving issues of the day? How does he regard abortion? Health-care reform? Public debt? The declining health of the nation's educational system? The racial fissures threatening to drive whites, blacks, Asians and Hispanics apart?
The United States has had little luck with military geniuses in the presidency. Between Washington and Eisenhower we elected Harrison, Taylor, Pierce, Grant, Garfield, Hayes, Harrison II and McKinley. Only the first and last generals in the Oval Office showed any distinction there, and Grant was a national catastrophe. Why not Madonna instead?
\ Paxton Davis is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.
by CNB