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His race also gives Powell license to recognize and even joke about the ethnic differences in America in the face of both tiresome political correctness and simmering racial hatred. In his San Diego speech he parodied a pompous white military officer speaking in empty and orotund phrases. Then he mimicked a black sergeant talking about the coming war in the Persian Gulf: "We gonna kick butt and go home." Describing an encounter with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at his White House treaty signing with Yasser Arafat, Powell put on a New York Jewish accent. And he even worked around the edges of gay sensibilities. "Arafat ... is so taken with the moment that he starts to pull me toward him and hug me and give me a two-cheek kiss. But I can only stand so much new world order ... " The audience laughed with him.
Powell's views on specific political issues are not fully articulated, and most Americans see him largely in policy-neutral terms. Thus he is something of an empty ideological vessel into which voters pour their own beliefs. But in the scores of speeches he has given since his retirement as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the message he has crafted is a brilliantly balanced mix of conservative values and a somewhat liberal view of the proper role of government.
His most powerful theme has been the importance of family, of America as a big national family, and of reconciliation among warring forces abroad and hostile groups at home. He repeatedly tells the story of a young African-American soldier being interviewed just before going into battle in Kuwait. The soldier was asked whether he was afraid. "He said," Powell relates proudly, "'I am not afraid. And the reason I'm not afraid is that I'm with my family.' He looked over his shoulder at the other youngsters in his unit. They were white and black and yellow and every color of the American mosaic. 'That's my family. We take care of one another.'"
Powell leads toward his larger point: "If we can build a spirit of family into the heart of an 18-year-old black private, send him 8,000 miles away from home, join hundreds of similar teams and have them believe that, can there be any question in your mind or in your heart that we have the capacity as a nation to instill that same sense of family, and all it entails, in every workplace, in every community, in every school, in every home back here in America?"
He draws the contrast between his message and that of other politicians. "There's a lot of shouting and screaming going on in our political system. But we have to keep our lives on certain fundamental principles, and one of those is that America is a family ... We've got to start remembering that no member of our family should be satisfied if any member of our American family is suffering or in need and we can do something about it.
"We've got to teach our youngsters what a family means, what giving to your community means, what raising good children means. We've got to restore a sense of shame to our society. Nothing seems to shame us or outrage us anymore. We look at our television sets and see all kinds of trash, and we allow it to come into our homes. We're not ashamed of it anymore." But just how, either as candidate or President, he would bring about such results he doesn't say.