Playing Powell Politics: The General's Zest for Power

Memoirs by retired generals and admirals usually have titles like A Soldier Reports or Command Missions, more simply, Soldier, or even the starkly declarative Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant. Colin Powell has called his book My American Journey, a curiously nonmilitary title, and the marketers at Random House have put on the dust jacket the no less civilian description, "The life story of a young boy from the Bronx who grew up to live the American Dream."

These minor facts illustrate the curious and powerful mixture of simplicity and artistry in the writing of the book, and perhaps in the man as well. The title is, it is fair to say, better suited to a general who wishes to make a political career than would be something like My Life in Uniform. This is not surprising, for the principal character is the most politically adroit general the United States has seen since Dwight D. Eisenhower (whom Powell admires greatly).

Having secured the services of a distinguished collaborator, Joseph E. Persico, himself the author of several excellent books, General Powell paints a self-portrait of the bluff and simple soldier who is also, however, a canny Washington infighter. The way he blends these two characters lends his story much interest--as do the careful interjections of judiciously expressed interest in serving his country further in unnamed higher office.

A FAVORABLE BACKGROUND

Powell's life story, impressive as it is, is not a tale of struggle against adversity. Born into a strong middle-class family of Jamaican immigrants, growing up in a relatively safe and cohesive multiethnic neighborhood in the Bronx, Powell attended City College when its standards were still high. He came from a social stratum that supplied, and still supplies, the military with most of its leaders. He entered the U.S. Army at just the point when the color of his skin was no bar to advancement--if anything, as he tacitly admits, rather the reverse. He encountered formal, overt racial discrimination in its last days in the South, but off military bases, not on them. A natural soldier who loved his trade, he did well at each level of command and had opportunities for professional advancement and further education offered to him by an institution that also provided the company of comrades. At no stage in his career did he lack exemplars and patrons who thought well of him and advanced his career accordingly. His private life, one readily sees, has been blessed by an exceptionally strong marriage and family life, the support of a devout Episcopalian faith, and a ready capacity for friendship. Colin Powell did not claw his way to the top in the face of professional or personal hardship; he rose in favorable circumstances by ability and ebullient charm.

None of this detracts from Powell's virtues, which even in a co-authored, carefully drafted book of this kind shine through. His robust sense of the absurd manifests itself in anecdotes told at his own expense. It is difficult to contrive humor, and its continual presence in the book, as in personal encounters with Powell, reflects something essential about the man. More than once Powell refers to his hot temper, and one suspects that his ability to guffaw has neutralized the acid in an anger that, he admits, periodically erupted in shouting at subordinates. Humor bespeaks as well a sense of proportion; it fits with the self-portrait of a man who as a commander wasted little time with the more senseless forms of spit and polish, who tried to wrap up work by 5:30 p.m., and who enjoyed a good party. Indeed, more than once Powell wistfully recalls the days when the army did not regard a drink too many as grounds for the termination of a career. Humor and self-confidence often go together, and the latter characteristic is even more notable than the former. On the night following tense interviews for the White House Fellows program, Powell was partying while his competitors nervously waited for envelopes to be slipped under their doors at Airlie House.

DISDAIN FOR DEEP THINKERS

Powell often repeats the injunction, "Don't trust the experts," a sentiment that reflects not merely mistrust of others but confidence in himself. He describes his rethinking of the American defense posture in 1994 as a back-of-the-envelope exercise: "What I was hatching amounted to analysis by instinct. I was not going on intelligence estimates, war games, or computer projections." This self-confidence leads to Powell's third great asset, a natural talent for leadership, developed by the army through simple maxims that all second lieutenants learn but not all take to heart: "Take care of your people," "The boss eats last," and the like. Many of these are included in the book as "Colin Powell's Rules," 13 maxims ("Check small things," "Don't take counsel of your fears or naysayers") that are sound advice if not necessarily profound truths.