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Powell is treating the presidential option with the same methodical attention he has given most endeavors. He is thinking long and hard about his options and about the likely consequences of his actions, meeting with a pair of close friends, former Reagan White House chief of staff Kenneth Duberstein and former Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Armitage. They had their last skull session on May 24, when Powell provided a tasty take-out lunch from Chicken-Out, a step up from the greasy grocery-chain fare he had served at their previous meeting. With each public outing on the lecture circuit, he fills in more blanks in his agenda of political positions. And while his book, to be published in September and for which he reportedly received a $6 million advance, was originally planned to end with his retirement as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, he has added a new last chapter about his views on the major issues of the day.
He is also preparing for his book tour, which will begin in mid-September and will take him to 20 cities across the nation. The first event in that launch will be a television interview with Barbara Walters. For that appearance, Powell went to Jamaica to get some TV footage of the land his parents left to come to America. When the book tour and its attendant publicity are over in late October, Powell will no longer be a blank political slate. And at that moment, he will read the polls again to see whether the fuller picture of Colin Powell has diminished or enhanced his political attractiveness.
Will he then roll the dice? He is certainly not saying now. Neither is anyone close to him. Powell and his friends agree that one important vote will come from Alma, the general's wife of 32 years. What is her verdict? "Alma's not opining," says a Powell friend. "But her name isn't Sherman." If elected, she will serve.
And Powell himself? His reluctance is deep and his indecision is real. He is flattered by the attention and not unaware of the role a black candidate-and a black President-could play in America. But he does not feel compelled to run either as a role model for African Americans or to demonstrate to whites that blacks can make good leaders.
The core of the problem for Colin Powell is that no matter which course his candidacy would take, either as a Republican-challenging the party's titular leaders and current front runner-or as an independent, the very act of his running would disrupt the settled pattern of American politics.
Intellectually, Powell can argue both the positive and negative aspects of such disruption. A black President could become a major healer of the racial divisions that plague this country. A true centrist could form a governing coalition that could bring stability and end the "channel surfing" that has marked recent elections. A strong leader elected largely on his own terms, without obligations to interest groups, could define a new course for America, at home and abroad, for the next generation.
On the other hand, a Powell candidacy could finish off the staggering Democratic Party. As either a Republican nominee or an independent candidate, he would attract a substantial number of black votes taking away the most reliable core of the party's electoral support and vacuuming up votes Clinton needs if he is to win in 1996.