(4 of 9)
To understand the dynamics, it helps to back up a few paces. The last time Powell worked with a Bush, the foreign policy team was built on centrism. The President had long experience; his best friend, Jim Baker, was at State; his foreign policy mentor, Brent Scowcroft, was at the National Security Council. The tough guy at the Pentagon, Dick Cheney, was reined in by the consensus among the others. The team worked seamlessly, pretty much agreeing on things, sharing an outlook that was steady, center-right, practical. Powell loved it and felt an integral part of it.
Bush Jr. put together something very different. He never imagined a team so moderate. He made his dad's conservative Defense Secretary his Vice President and put Don Rumsfeld, the hard-liner who taught Cheney how to do it, in the Pentagon. Into the White House he brought the impressive but fairly narrow Sovietologist Condoleezza Rice. She looked like a moderate but has steadily morphed to the right. Powell, by contrast, edged toward the center after leaving the Army, if not on goals at least on the diplomatic means.
That has made Powell chum in the water for the sharks in Dubya's sea. Thanks to Cheney and Rumsfeld, a generation of players with a well-honed ideology give the team a distinct hard-nosed tilt. When a friend asked Paul Wolfowitz, who is one of them, why he took the managerial No. 2 slot at Defense, he gave a one-word answer "Powell"--though Wolfowitz now denies it. These guys don't salute anyone, and they don't operate behind closed doors. They speak loudly, in public, and they make demands. Powell faces rivals who are interested less in solving problems, as he is, than in imposing their will on the Administration and the world.
A goodly handful were thrust upon Powell's staff, and he thought it was good politics not to protest too much. A few he actively blocked, like a Rumsfeld protege pushed for ambassador to NATO. Others languish in confirmation limbo. But some made it inside, and stir up trouble for him, like Star Warrior John Bolton in the powerful position of Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. Powell insists he had a "free hand" to pick from nominations. "Where we had a meeting of the minds, and the person and I looked like we could work together well, I made a deal," he told TIME. "But the deal was always with me." His circle complains that subversives "were foisted on him." Says a veteran of the Reagan policy wars: "The people around Cheney and Rumsfeld are prepared to battle to the death. Colin's fighting with one arm tied behind his back."