AJ DiCintio

Colin Powell Comes Up Small
May 11, 2009

There is only this to say about how small Colin Powell came up when he recently criticized the Republican Party before a group of security executives:

It didn’t make us sad; it made us stupendously sad as it reminded us that any person who is admirably large in one area of endeavor can be stunningly minuscule in another.

Of course, this is not to say there aren’t valid criticisms to be made of the GOP. Indeed, there are many, including demands by Main Street Conservatives that Republican politicians quit their fixation on the notion that "What’s good for General Motors is [always] good for the country” and end their de facto acceptance of judicial activism as a constitutionally sound theory of jurisprudence.

The problem with Powell, then, is not that he criticizes but that he criticizes superficially while remaining silent on important issues of our time.

For example, regarding the judiciary, he hasn’t deemed it important to tell the nation what he thinks about the call for Americans to forsake the idea of the Constitution’s "We the People of the United States” in favor of "We the Liberal Judicial Oligarchy of the United States and the International Community.”

Shockingly, there are a great number of other crucial issues Powell relegates to the bottom of the Importance Scale. Here are a few:

. . . The administration’s pacifist-lite approach to "overseas contingency operations.”

. . . The administration’s support of an inquisition against those who used "torture” to obtain information from persons alleged to have caused "man made disasters.”

. . . The administration’s insultingly vague plan to close the "Stalinist-style” prison at Guantanamo.

. . . The administration’s laying a double incubus upon America, consisting of ten trillion borrowed dollars and an astounding increase in the power wielded by the level of government most remote from the people.

A touchy-feely Pentagon and CIA? A Pollyannaish foreign policy? Centralized government? Rampant inflation? Stifling taxes? Depressed economic growth? China’s decreased interest in buying American debt?

On those issues and others, Powell’s silence (like Obama’s) counsels, "Not to worry,” and dismisses Ben Franklin’s warning, "He that lives upon hope will die fasting,” as nothing more than pessimistic braying by a hopeless jackass.

In his defense, some may argue that Powell prefers to be a generalist about American politics, a kind of national philosopher.

However, if that were the case, he would imitate David Brooks (NY Times), who recently lamented that Republican leaders have not "learned the right lessons from . . . Westerns,” films that Brooks maintains "celebrated civic order” and thus were "really about religion, education, science, culture, etiquette and rule of law — the pillars of community.”

If he were to enter into that kind of discussion, Powell would certainly offer the nation his take on Brooks’ thought that there are two competing theories of civic order:

". . . the liberal theory, in which teams of [Federal Government] experts draw up plans to engineer order wherever problems arise.”

"And . . . the more conservative vision in which government sets certain rules, but mostly empowers the complex web of institutions in which the market is embedded.”

But again, only silence.

So, what does Powell deem important?

Well, after he characterized the Republican Party as being in "deep trouble,” his stream of consciousness ran off to Rush Limbaugh, whom he criticized as "an entertainer [who] diminishes the party and intrudes or inserts into our public life a kind of nastiness that we would be better to do without.”

Colin Powell’s most important suggestion for creating a better America: Switch to NPR, all ye Rush Limbaugh listeners!

That "suggestion,” however, further diminishes Mr. Powell for two reasons:

It is ridiculously shallow.

It mindlessly repeats the propaganda put out by the Obama White House, which, according to "Politico,” used polling conducted by Democratic strategists Stanley Greenberg and James Carville to develop a campaign to weaken the Republican Party by characterizing "demon” Limbaugh as its face.

And thus political shill Powell continues his self-inflicted diminution in the public eye.

. . . Because the American people expect better from a man who knows that Rush Limbaugh is neither a Republican Party official nor a person who dogmatically toes the official Republican Party line.

. . . Because the American people expect better from a man who claims to worry about "nastiness [in] our public life” but whose thoughts about the problem flow to private sector Rush Limbaugh, not to the tradition initiated by the "trash for cash” Clinton White House War Room, headed by (surprise, surprise) James Carville, the hateful, misogynistic political animal who to this day is considered a giant by Democrats, if only for his contemptible slur that suggested, "Drag a hundred dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you’ll find.”

. . . Because the American people expect better from a man who is purportedly filled with concern about political "nastiness” and ideological purity but utters not a word about how the Clintons and Obama have institutionalized the tactics taught by radical leftist Saul Alinsky (previously America’s most famous "community organizer”), including Tactic Number 13:

"Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”

. . . And finally, because the American people expect better from a man, who, having been blessed with a multitude of advantages, behaves like a dupe handing out Socialist Party leaflets to workers at an auto plant or steel mill — which is exactly what Powell did when he lectured every dissenter to the Obama Vision that "Americans do want to pay taxes for services . . . Americans are looking for more government in their life, not less.”

That embarrassingly simplistic, pathetically dogmatic statement alone proves how small Colin Powell is coming up these days.

Given the nature of his former service to his country, it is stupendously sad to see it.