Behind Powell's choice: principle, not race

Behind Powell's choice: principle, not race
BY LAWRENCE WILKERSON
Wednesday, October 22nd 2008, 4:54 PM
After endorsing Barack Obama on Sunday, Colin Powell - my former boss and my friend - has already scorn from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan, both of whom accused him of favoring Obama because of the color of his (and Powell's) skin.
"I am now researching his past endorsements to see if I can find all the inexperienced, very liberal, white candidates he has endorsed. I'll let you know what I come up with," said Limbaugh - trying, with his typical class, to convert a difficult personal decision into a crass and opportunistic one about race.
Because Powell isn't one to mix it up with the right-wing media, which has long distrusted him, allow me to say a few words in his defense.
Colin Powell is a New Yorker. New Yorkers tend to be realists - that is, they take the world for what it is: they adapt, they maneuver, they succeed or fail. Then they move on. By endorsing Obama, Powell once again demonstrated this aspect of his character.
I know deep in my bones, this was a judgment he made as a pragmatist and a patriot who cares deeply about America's reputation in the world. Not, I insist, as a man who happens to be black.
In endorsing Obama, Powell said he was transformational. He said he was unflappable. He said he displayed sound judgment, was able to listen to advice, was able to unify, to heal, and to use the bully pulpit - one of the few effective instruments available to our President - with skill and with purpose.
Powell also addressed his belief that the challenges presented by the current financial and economic crisis can best be met by Obama. It is clear that Obama's careful, methodical approach to this crisis so far has instilled confidence in his ability to do just that.
All this demonstrates is a realist's appreciation of the potential that exists in this man who has managed one of the best campaigns in recent memory, brought out young people in unheard of numbers, and raised money in unprecedented amounts - and principally from $50 to $100 donations given month by month by citizens from Maine to Montana, from Michigan to Mississippi, leaving him few special interests to which he is beholden, unless the vast middle class of America can be called "a special interest."
That same no-nonsense, New York way of seeing things can be applied to the other man in this presidential race, Sen. John McCain.
McCain is anything but transformational. He marks the end of an era, not the beginning. He has exchanged what was his trademark value - his independence, his ability to say no, even to his own party - for a pandering to the so-called Republican base, a base that has been diminished markedly by the fiscally irresponsible Bush-Cheney administration. See-http://harlemcommunityorganizers.blogspot.com