THE MOST INTERESTING DECISION IN MODern American politics was made, in the final days, not once and for all but over and over again. On Thursday night Colin Powell was poised to run. All the stars were aligned, the polls plump with support, the money hovering, ready to land. And then there came Newt Gingrich, who slipped away from his handlers and arrived in secret on Powell's doorstep, bearing the flame of the conservative revolution and telling him, in effect, "Do it."
So close he came, and yet by the next morning the fire had gone out again, and by Monday night the decision was definitely no. But after he returned from a speech in Philadelphia, he was back on the fence. Alma Powell told her children that she wouldn't believe he was really getting out until he stood before the cameras and said so.
When he finally did, on a cold Wednesday afternoon in the kind of soulless hotel ballroom where campaigns go to die, his friends had never seen him look so sad. In his graceful exit speech, they heard all the qualities and contradictions that have made Powell's character and career so fascinating: a military man with a social conscience; a black New Yorker who attracted white Southern voters and Wasp CEOs like lint; the man who kept gays out of the military but endorsed gay parents as long as they create a home with love and discipline; a geology major who became, in the words of Gerald Ford and the view of many others, "the best public speaker in America"; the product of one of the most rigid, hierarchical institutions in American life who had a chance to realign political parties and reinvent race relations; a relative political unknown who inspired huge trust; a black man on a white horse.
"I have never in my life seen him so torn up about something," admits Powell's son Michael. "You have to remember, this is a soldier. This is a warrior, who does not like walking away from a fight. It's not fear; it's not self-doubt. Every instinct in his bones says, 'Do it.'"
This is the story of why he didn't.
THE MEN AND WOMEN WHO WEIGHED THE decision with Colin Powell agree that there was no one factor and no one moment that tipped the balance--not even the obvious ones. His family heard the rumors that they had somehow vetoed his running. "There was a lot more to it than that," says Michael, as he pauses, lets out a sigh and begins to tell what happened. "I hear 'It was Alma' all the time. Well, it wasn't just Alma. This is a much more sophisticated, subtle story than that."
In fact, he says, for all the reports of family powwows during the final stretch, Powell never even put it to a vote.
As for Alma? There was never a veto. Powell never asked her.
You have to understand how this family works, Michael explains. Everyone who knows Alma says that if her husband had chosen to run, she would have supported him, however opposed she was to the whole idea. And that's why he never came out and asked her, but tried to read the signals instead. "My mother would look at him and say, 'If you want to do it, I'm in,'" Michael says. "The kids would say the same thing: 'We're in.' Because we've done this before. We're always in. That's a cardinal rule in this house: We're in if you really want to do it. See, he never would ask us to make this decision."