Powell's Loyalty The Real Issue

WASHINGTON - Colin Powell's resignation as Secretary of State was one of those surprises that should have come as no surprise at all. Foreign-policy Washington has been gossiping for a week now about the new consulting firm Powell and his top aide and best friend Richard Armitage will soon be launching. Two mornings after Election Day a story went round town that Powell had gathered his assistant secretaries of state together to wrap up any project on which they wanted his help no later than the end of January.

But who needed gossip? Anybody with a library card could have foretold that Powell would have to leave in a second Bush term. It was all laid out in the black-and-white pages of Bob Woodward's best-seller, Plan of Attack -- a book you might call the best-selling letter of resignation in history.

"Relations [between Powell and Vice-President Cheney] became so strained that Powell and Cheney could not, and did not, have a sit-down lunch or any discussion about their differences. Never."

"[After reading an unfavourable news story about him, White House political advisor Karl] Rove had figured that State -- or Powell -- wanted to strike back at the White House .... He was just collateral damage.

"[Powell] and Rumsfeld got into another big fight. This time it took a week to resolve .... Powell couldn't believe the silliness.

"Both the president and she were 'mad,' [Condoleezza Rice] told the secretary of state. Powell had 'given the Democrats a remarkable tool.' ... Powell did not particularly enjoy being dressed down by someone 17 years younger who held the job he had held 15 years earlier.

"Whenever anyone suggested that Powell should have pangs of conscience on the war, Powell said he had done everything in his power. In August 2002 he had nearly broken his spear, laying before the president all the difficulties of a war ... He had warned the president. It was the president's decision, not his."

Cabinet officers frequently disagree with their colleagues and their president. Sometimes they disagree so strenuously that they resign. Sometimes they go into outright opposition to their former friends. But surely never has one Cabinet officer trashed so many of his colleagues so publicly while serving alongside them.

Powell's resignation is now being reported as a story about ideology. The story line goes that Powell was too conciliatory for a unilateralist president and his hawkish advisors -- and that his departure signals that the administration will continue along its neoconservative line.

The story line is wholly wrong. Powell's departure is a story about loyalty, not ideology. Powell played politics by the rules of the George H.W. Bush administration -- an administration in which aides used leaks as a routine weapon of bureaucratic warfare. As chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Powell had some especially juicy secrets to give away, many of which appeared in Bob Woodward's book about the Gulf War, The Commanders. In Powell's own 1995 memoir, he recounts how his once-close relationship with Dick Cheney dwindled away during the war: It never seems to have occurred to him that Cheney had decided Powell was not a man he could trust.

Trustworthy or not, however, the incoming George W. Bush administration needed Powell. Polls suggested Powell was the most admired man in America. Shaken by the close result, the recount, and the uncertain public reaction to the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore, the new President offered Powell the most honourable appointment in the executive branch.

Unbeknownst to Powell, however, the appointment came with strings attached. The younger Bush had worked the corridors of his father's administration as an advisor-without-portfolio. He had been horrified by the undiscipline and self-seeking of the Bush 41 administration, and he had quietly made up his mind never to tolerate anything like it from any government he ever ran.

And by and large the President got his wish. Taken as a whole, the Bush 43 administration has been the most discreet and the most cohesive since Dwight Eisenhower's. There was just one exception: Colin Powell and his senior aides at State. As the United States headed toward war in Iraq, Powell and his team moved toward open rebellion against the foreign policy of the United States.

Powell had every right to his own views. And he did the President and the country a great service by vigorously advocating those views within the councils of government. But once the President decides, the advocacy has to stop. In Powell's case, it never did.

Powell's over-enthusiastic advocacy at home left him little time to do advocacy for the United States abroad. Colin Powell has travelled less than any Secretary of State in 30 years: Just 180 days in his first 42 months as secretary, 45% less than the average of his recent predecessors. Powell's supporters often praise him for his battles to uphold America's image in the world, but the truth is that if he had battled less, he might have upheld more.

Powell must be given his due. He has great accomplishments to his credit as secretary, headed by his dedicated work to prevent an Indo-Pakistani war after terrorists based on Pakistani territory attacked the Indian Parliament in December, 2001. And certainly he has emerged with his own private reputation undiminished and even enhanced: He will have no trouble attracting clients to his consulting firm.

But there's an old joke on Wall Street about the firm whose brokers all took pride in their splendid yachts: "Where," the punchline goes, "are the customers' yachts?" Colin Powell is sailing out of office more gilded and glorified than ever. If only he had done as much for the President he swore to serve.