The veteran of military and political service discusses his career, America’s challenges around the world, and the lessons for good leadership in military and civilian life. Excerpt from the program on June 7, 2012.
GENERAL COLIN POWELL, Former U.S. Secretary of State; Former Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff; Author, It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership
In conversation with DAN ASHLEY, News Anchor, ABC 7 TV; Member, Commonwealth Club Board of Governors
DAN ASHLEY: I want to start with a question that I know you never go anywhere without being asked. Many Americans felt that you should have been the first African-American president in this country. You detail in your book why you chose not to try to become the first African-American president. Why didn’t you want that job?
COLIN POWELL: A lot of people were encouraging me to run, and a lot of people were telling me they didn’t want me to run, so it was not quite as unanimous as Dan suggests. I was not a political official at the time that this came up in my first book, my memoirs in 1995. I was a career soldier until 1993, so I never expressed any political views.
Nobody ever knew what party I might be in, and this was because I was a career soldier; we didn’t do that. In fact, when I worked for President Reagan as his national security advisor, I was still an active duty military officer, and I never talked politics, and they never asked me, in the White House, what party I might be in – to protect my military status, but I think they were afraid that I might answer, so they didn’t ask. When I got out, and then wrote my memoirs in 1995, I was a civilian, and people started pressing me, and I gave it a lot of thought for about, oh, six weeks or so. You feel an obligation when people are pushing you this way, or encouraging you to do something – and I’ve always tried to serve my country in whatever assignment I have been given. But after a number of weeks, let’s say six weeks, I remember one morning waking up thinking that this was the right thing for me, but I didn’t have the passion and the drive that one needs to be successful in American political life. My family was not anxious to do this either. It was a 100 percent judgment within the family that, “Let’s find other ways to serve the country. We’ve served for 35 years; we’ll find other ways to serve, but not in political life.”
What I have found in the course of my life: You have to do that which you think you do well, and which you love doing, and you have to really follow your instincts after bringing in all the information that’s available. My instincts told me that this was not the right thing for me or for my family, and so I announced that I would not be seeking political office. People have asked me almost every day since, “Do you regret it?” The answer is no. I made a decision that I thought was right for me and for my family. Therefore, I have no regrets. We found other ways to serve: secretary of state for four years, and all the work my wife and I do with youth programs, in some way is probably as important as anything else that’s going on in this country.
ASHLEY: You mentioned, as an aside, [that] you relied on your instinct for that decision. You relied on your instinct for another decision, and that is some of the opportunities that you were afforded to get involved in the financial services industry as you left public life. You chose not to.
POWELL: I was very flattered when I left my position as secretary of state at a number of offers that came my way from different financial institutions, and other organizations in the New York community, principally. They were very flattering, very remunerative, but I essentially was just going to be more a figurehead than an actual financial expert. I even said to one of these companies, “What do you want me for? I don’t know anything about hedge funds.” It turned out they didn’t either, but ... [Laughter.]
They said, “Don’t worry about it. We have people who do know about it; they’ll advise you.” Well, then they didn’t really want me. They just wanted my name. A good friend of mine in the financial business, whom I trusted very much, said to me, “Why wear one of their T-shirts? Wear your own T-shirt. Remain independent. Stay loose. Do lots of different things, and you can serve in many, many important ways.” I turned them all down. You talk about a close call, because all three of the principal companies that were soliciting my services almost went belly-up in 2008. I would’ve been among the 8.2 percent of our fellow Americans who are unemployed.
Sometimes you think you’re passing up an opportunity, but if after informing your instinct – after you’ve thought about it, considered all options, and your instinct is still sort of there nagging, and you say, “Don’t do it; it’s not for you,” then I always try to follow my instinct, because it is not a guess. It is an informed instinct. I cover in the book many examples of great leaders who’ve made the most critical of decisions based on their instinct that was informed by the information they had collected.
ASHLEY: Let’s talk about a decision that I wonder if you do have any regrets about – your speech to the United Nations about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that was so pivotal in the decision to go to war. How did that come about? As we now know, there were no weapons of mass destruction. How did you get put in that position?
POWELL: Well, let me just correct one point you made, that it was “so pivotal in the decision to go to war.” When I gave that speech, that decision had already been made. The president had decided in January of 2003 that he would have to take the war to Saddam Hussein. Three months before that, in the fall of 2002, the United States Congress – with an overwhelming resolution, a three-to-one vote in the Senate, better than two-to-one in the House – had given the president authority to undertake military action if the diplomacy did not work. So the decision had already been made, and the way it came to be was that after the president had made the decision but had not announced it, and troops were in place – we were just a few weeks short of war – he thought it was important that we present our case to the international community through the United Nations. They were the offended party, the United Nations. He asked me to do it, and work had been done on such a speech to be given by someone, and I was the one who was going to give it.
The speech that I was given, in the draft, was not adequate. It wasn’t backed up by the intelligence community; we couldn’t cross-reference things. So for four days, I lived with my staff out at the CIA, with a room full of experts, and with the director and deputy director of the CIA on top of all of this, and we put together that speech. Every word of it was verified and substantiated by the intelligence community, all 16 agencies of the intelligence community, so when I gave it I was quite comfortable that even though it was a mostly inferential case, it was a good inferential case, and it would stand the test of examination. I understood how important that speech was, not for making the decision but [for] communicating to the world what we saw and what we thought, and putting my credibility and reputation behind it.
The war came, and we didn’t find any weapons of mass destruction. We found a Saddam Hussein that, if left to his own devices and released from U.N. sanctions, would go back to creating weapons of mass destruction, but the actual presence of such weapons – we got it wrong. Then, we discovered that some of the sourcing that we were using was not accurate, and should never have been used. The whole case with respect to the presence of weapons of mass destruction fell apart, and I’ve got to tell you that I deeply regretted it, because I’m the one who presented that case most publicly. I’ve even had members of Congress say to me, “You know, it was your speech that convinced me to vote for the resolution.” I say, “Sorry, sir, you voted for it four months before my speech. Nice try.”[Laughter.]
The reason I tell you it that way is because a lot of people suggest that I was the key – and that speech was the key – to all of the decision process that led to war. In fact, it was an explanation of why we thought that it was necessary to use military action. It’s a war that I had hoped we could avoid. I persuaded President Bush, and he bought into it to take it to the U.N., to try to get Saddam Hussein to fess up to all he had and what he was doing or not doing. Saddam Hussein did not do that to our satisfaction, and the president decided that military action was appropriate. I fully supported that decision, and I took the case to the U.N., and in the rest of the spring period, in all my testimony and presentations, I supported the decision he made.
My real regret is that we didn’t prosecute the war as effectively as we might have. We thought that once Saddam fell, and the government fell in Baghdad, it would all snap together again somehow, whereas what I had been saying to the president is, “If you break it, you’re going to own it.” If you take out a government, and the people are standing around wondering what comes next, you become the government; you are responsible for their security and for their wellbeing. We didn’t handle that part of the campaign well, and then, as you all know, an insurgency broke out. The pressure that Saddam Hussein had kept on the Sunnis and the Shiites and the Kurds to get along or else – that pressure was gone, and we saw that they weren’t going to get along that easily. That ethnic conflict is still playing out, but when you read the papers today, you see that Iraq is doing better with respect to its economy, its infrastructure. It’s pumping more oil than it ever did under Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi people have every opportunity to put together a solid country with a representative form of government but, like any democracy growing up from infancy, it’ll take time and there will be difficulties. That’s the story. I was asked to present it. I was assured it was correct, and it wasn’t correct, and I regret that very, very much, and I essentially have become the example of it being incorrect, and I always get the question.
ASHLEY: How painful was that for you, personally?
POWELL: It was very painful. When you put yourself on the line and you’re representing not just yourself, but the president and the United States government, and you’re working from information that’s been given to the Congress, given to the president, given to our commanders, given to the world as being an accurate picture, and nevertheless you become the symbol of that accurate picture, and then it all starts to fall apart – and you’re sitting in your office and then suddenly somebody else comes in and says, “No, that turns out not to be the case. No, it isn’t a biological van; it looks like it’s just a truck,” you can see the case fall apart. It was painful, because you knew that all the attention would be focused on your presentation. Do you go fetal and climb under your desk? No. I’m still secretary of state. I’ve got to get on with the work that is before me. As I learned over the years, when you have something that is as stressing as this, you have got to manage it as best you can, but then you’ve got to get on with the other work that you have. Don’t let failure cause you to not be able to function any longer.
ASHLEY: How much friction, General, was there between you and the rest of the Bush administration in those last couple of years?
POWELL: In my last couple of years, we had differences and challenges with respect to Iraq and Afghanistan and other things, and that’s gotten most of the press attention over the years. But what’s interesting is that we did a lot of things that didn’t get much attention, that were very, very good. We increased aid to Africa and other undeveloped parts of the world. We helped with the expansion of NATO. We supported the expansion of the European Union. We put huge sums of money against some of the worst diseases that we are facing in the world, HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases like malaria and tuberculosis. We did a great deal to stabilize our relationship with China, with the Russian Federation, but people don’t remember that or don’t focus on that as easily as they focus on the disagreements we had. In early 2004 I said to the president that I only intended to serve one term, “and, frankly, we’re not operating as we should as a team, Mr. President, and so I think you should change us after you win in the fall of 2004,” which I expected he would, “and the change should begin with me, because my views tend to be so much out of alignment with the views of some of your other advisers, and so I think I should be the first to go.” I suggested that and he agreed, and so I left in January of 2005.
ASHLEY: Thirty-five years in the Army, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, secretary of state – your thoughts on gays in the military, serving openly?
POWELL: Yeah. When we put in Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in 1993, when President Clinton came into office, it was very controversial. People forget that the policy that existed then was far more stringent than the DADT policy we came up with. As chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I had to represent the views of the senior leadership of the military and the noncommissioned officers, and the chaplains, who had very strong views about this, considering the denominations we generally draw chaplains from. Everything taken into consideration, I, my colleagues and the Joint Chiefs did not think it was appropriate for us to go all the way with gays in the military at that time, so we put in place DADT, meaning, “Keep your sexual preferences and activities to yourself. We won’t ask. Don’t tell. Keep it private.” It was a discriminatory policy. It’s not a policy that I would expect to see anywhere else in American life, but the military is different. We tell you who you’re going to sleep with. We tell you who you’re going to live with, who you’re going to die with, and so we have always been allowed by the Congress to set rules that we feel are necessary for good order and discipline in the armed forces, and that’s the basis upon which we rested it.
I also said that times are changing, and as our society evolves we have to keep reviewing this issue, and if the day comes when the senior military leaders who came after me say to the president and to the Congress, “We can now accept and live with a new policy of eliminating DADT,” I’m all for it. When Admiral Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff several times after me, made that statement to the Congress under President Obama’s administration, I fully supported it. I think that the country has evolved to the point. The new law has been in effect for a year and, in my conversations with the senior military officers, it is not causing any difficulties within the force. They’re able to handle it, and that’s good.
ASHLEY: Let’s talk world affairs. Syria, which has become an increasing concern around the world and around the region – what role should the United States play? Is there a military role that the United States should play?
POWELL: The United States should continue to play a diplomatic and political role, working with the international community. It is a very difficult situation. President Assad is somebody I know. I’ve worked with him. I’ve met with him on a number of occasions, and he is a total liar. He cannot be trusted on anything he says or anything he ever told me. But he is maintaining control of the country and he has an army that is still loyal to him. So he has the wherewithal to fight this insurgency, this revolt, whatever you choose to call it. It’s not clear who is in the opposition – who’s revolting, and what do they represent? He is not only trying to protect himself; he’s trying to protect his tribe.
There is not going to be a simple solution to this. I do not think it is appropriate or in our interest to intervene militarily with U.S. troops. This is something they have to resolve, and it may be resolved through the force of arms. Hopefully, a diplomatic solution might be found. That may not be the case.
The other suggestion is, should we give arms to the opposition? I think you have to be very careful. If the opposition is not able to use these weapons, or if we don’t know who we’re actually arming, we might end up with a more dangerous situation, and more people being killed as President Assad’s response to this. Continue the support: economic sanctions, diplomatic efforts and political efforts, but I support the position of the president and almost all the other members of the international community, that it is not appropriate to send in outside armed troops. There are a lot of countries that are going through this kind of turmoil. Should we send armed troops into Sudan because it is so vivid on our television screens? There are just so many places that you could send your sons and daughters to fight, and you have to really think, “Is this in our national interest?”
ASHLEY: Your thoughts on Iran and the nuclear ambitions of its leader? How you expect Israel to respond?
POWELL: None of us wants to see Iran with a nuclear weapon. Iran can claim, “We don’t want a nuclear weapon, either. We’ve been telling you for years that all we want to do is to have a power program that allows us to generate electricity, but we don’t want a nuclear weapon.” They’ve gotten to the point where they are about to create a nuclear weapon and put it on a system that will deliver it. So I still think there’s an opportunity for diplomacy to convince the Iranians, as we put more and more economic and political pressure on them, that it is in their interest to prove to us beyond a shadow of a doubt, by the most rigorous inspection regime, that all they’re doing is trying to create rigorous nuclear programs, produce electricity, and that they’re not on the road to a weapon.
They’re hurting; the economic sanctions are hurting them. I only had a couple of meetings with the Iranian foreign minister when I was secretary of state, and at one of the meetings in Egypt, we were just making small talk. We had to be very careful; we both were under instructions not to get too close to one another here. Just to make small talk, I said, “What is the most significant problem that you have in Iran these days, Mr. Minister?” expecting him to say something like, “Israel.” He said, “Finding 600,000 jobs a year. We have a young, growing population. We have to find jobs for them.” Well, you’re not going to find jobs for them if you’re under sanctions because you’re fooling around with nuclear weapons and nuclear programs. You can’t eat it; you can’t do anything with it except polish those things. They’re worthless – but that’s as far as the conversation went.
Having said, that, I don’t know that it would be the proper thing to do – or that the case can be made that a military strike from anyone at this point is the appropriate action. They can reconstitute whatever you bomb, and the response from the rest of the world might be more difficult than you imagine. So I continue to believe in a diplomatic and political push.
Then, I have to put my old hat on as the person who is in charge of, or supervised, the nuclear weapons of the United States of America. We had 28,000 of them under my supervision when I was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As a core commander, I was prepared to use nuclear weapons against the Russian army and Germany when we were still back in the Cold War, and as a young captain, age 25, I was taught how to employ them, how to actually fire them at somebody. The one thing I’ve been persuaded about, out of all these experiences, is that these things cannot be used. They should never be used. They can be used to deter, to contain an enemy, as we did with the Soviet Union, but the thought of loosing these weapons on the world is very existential in nature. I do not think that any leadership in Iran – either Ahmadinejad, or Khamenei, or any of them – would sit down one day and say, “Gee, fellows, you know, I’m so mad at Israel,” or, “I’m so mad at the United States, that we’re going to fire the one or two weapons we have at them.”
That’s suicidal. They know what would happen the next day. Their principal interest is remaining in power, and the easiest way for them to lose power would be, either through overt threats or the use of these weapons, to be taken out. Same thing with North Korea. North Korea has a weapon. They keep shooting up rockets that don’t go anywhere. We still have to see that as a threat to the region and a danger, but at the same time, as I used to say in hearings when I was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the North Koreans know full well what will happen to them the day after they use one of these things. They will cease to exist as a society and as a nation, and they are not stupid. They only look stupid and act stupid, but they are not stupid. [Laughter.]
I mean this, now. They have a very clear idea of who they are and what they are, and they have this weird regime. But within that weird system, they’re very rational. The North Koreans are the toughest, best negotiators I’ve ever dealt with in my career, but they also know that if you want to stay in power, you have to find a way to deal with the rest of the world and give up these programs, and if you ever use them you’re no longer in in power. Therefore, they do not have incentive to use them.
ASHLEY: What made the North Koreans such good negotiators?
POWELL: They’re tough, because they don’t have the same relevant basis that we have. They lie, and they don’t see a lie as a lie. When we lie our feelings are hurt, and, “Oh, woe is me; I shouldn’t have done that.” With them it’s merely a negotiating point, and so they’ll tell you something tonight, and we’ll agree to something, and tomorrow morning they’ll come in as if they’ve never heard of it before, and they’ll start all over again. It’s like water torture in the negotiations, and they are superb at it.
Admiral C. Turner Joy was our negotiator in the Armistice talks in the early 1950s with the North Koreans. He wrote a marvelous book on the process of negotiating with them that I studied when I became chairman and secretary of state. He tells one story where they negotiated for weeks over whether they should have an agenda for a meeting. Every day the North Koreans had a new objection. No matter what they agreed to yesterday, tomorrow morning they’d agree to something else. We kept getting mad. You know Americans: “Oh, come on! Let’s go! Come on! Can’t we have a deal?” Finally we reached a deal with them, and everyone was happy, and Admiral Joy was happy, and then we discovered that the North Koreans really weren’t arguing about whether we had an agenda or not; they were arguing about what should be the first item on the agenda. We were worrying about the agenda, but they were beyond us: “Once we get the Americans so mad that they will accept anything, they won’t notice what the first item is, which is the only thing we care about.” They have not lost that ability to negotiate, and in the last years of the President Bush 43’s administration they got their money back, they got taken off the terrorist list, and all we got was a tower that was blown down that they could put back up in a couple of weeks. They’re good. They’re very good.
ASHLEY: Now, General, I’d like to talk with you about this fascinating book that you’ve written that has, I think, implication and instruction across a wide range of American life – terrific advice for young people, in many respects, and also for older folks, executives, and all those in a leadership position or all those who aspire to a leadership position. The things you start with that seem to have guided you and formed you over the years are a list of rules, and you highlight 13 of those rules. One of the ones that you’ve probably faced a number of times: “It’s not as bad as you think.” Tell us why that is important.
POWELL: It’s the first of the 13 rules, and it’s, “It’s not as bad as you think, and it’ll look better in the morning,” but then I say, “This is not a prediction; it might be worse. This is just an attitude to have.” [Laughter.] The reason I like that rule – and I use it all the time – is [that as] a leader, when faced with difficulties or tragedies, that’s the time you have to be most optimistic and display confidence that you can get on top of this tragedy. If you feel that way and you can communicate that positive attitude to your followers, to your employees or to your soldiers, you’re on the way to a solution. It has been very typical of America. When you look at terrible crises we’ve had – let’s say Pearl Harbor, or 9/11 – our leaders stood up the next day and said, “We’re going to get on top of this, and as bad as it looks it’s going to look better in the morning, and the morning after that, and the morning after that, and on and on until we prevail, until we get on top of it.” It’s a way of reminding myself all the time to have an optimistic attitude.
The last rule – the 13th rule – is related to it. It says, “perpetual optimism.” Feeling that way all the time, that you can make things better, is a force multiplier, meaning in military terms [that] you enhance the ability of your team – you enhance your ability to do something well – if you are always optimistic that you can do something better.
ASHLEY: One of the things that you talk about in terms of a key principle of solid leadership is the notion that kindness works. That is an interesting perspective from a military man, when often the military is so austere and so disciplined. Why is kindness so important in terms of leadership, both in the military and in civilian life?
POWELL: The only reason I wrote it that way is because it works. Kindness works. To get things done you have to bring people together, especially in the military where you’re going to be asking them to put their lives on the line. You can be tough and you can be demanding, and you can set high standards, but I’ve also found that if you do these things in a spirit of kindness, and showing the reason why we have to do these things – and kindness in the way that gets their respect and shows that you respect them – you can build a very, very powerful team on a basis of trust.
I’ve always found that I got more things done with kindness than without kindness. What’s the alternative to kindness – being a jerk? Yes, and so I’ve always found that, even in the most difficult situations I’ve faced, where I’ve had to deal with people who are adversaries, I never converted those adversaries into enemies. I understand how to deal with an adversary, but I want to make that adversary a friend. By approaching it in a way that reflects kindness – reflects my strong feelings, but at the same time I want to learn about your strong feelings – let’s see if we can find a deal here, a compromise. It’s something that’s missing too much in our life in Washington now. The kind of kindness that used to exist even among some of the most adversarial relations within Washington doesn’t seem to exist now.
We had a minister come to our church for a year. He was in trouble – we didn’t know what was wrong – and the bishop assigned him to us for a year. We just took him in. We took him in as a member of our family, and we were very kind to him. On his last sermon, as he was leaving – and I was sitting in the back of the church; I was a senior warden of our Episcopal church – he got up to give his final sermon, and I’ll never forget one sentence he used. He said, “Always display more kindness than seems necessary, because the person receiving it probably needs it a lot more than you know.” I’ve always found it to be a good thing to live with, and I’ve found it to be true on many occasions.
ASHLEY: [You also talk about] this notion of, “Pick people based on potential, not just performance.” Tell us a little bit about what you mean by that, and why that’s important.
POWELL: It applies in any capacity, in any occupation, but in the military it means a great deal to us, because in the military you’re creating your own leaders. If you need a battalion commander or a fighter pilot, you can’t go hire one from IBM or somewhere in Silicon Valley. You’ve got to grow ’em from being brand new officers or privates. In my case, a hundred lieutenants came in with me, let’s say; only one of us is going to make general. Which one is it? We measure our people, both enlisted and officer, constantly. How are they performing? The more senior you become, the more the focus is on not only performance but potential, and that’s a different thing. OK, he’s a great battalion commander, but has he broadened himself? Has he learned new skills? Does he have a better understanding of how to work with other services? Does he seem to have the potential to do just as well at the next higher level? That is a much more subjective determination. You look at all of the reports of how this man or woman did in the past, and then you have to put your experience to work and your instincts to work. Will this guy do a good job if I promote him, or will I be making a mistake? It’s a very human calculation you have to make, but that’s what we do in the military all the time.
Usually performance gives you a pretty good indication of what future potential is, but I’ve seen a lot of mistakes made, where people have been promoted when they shouldn’t have, and if you’d really had a serious talk with them they might have said, “Don’t promote me.” They knew that they were at their level of peak performance and potential, and they were doing a great job, and we needed them, but to move them up another level was putting them in a range of expectation that they couldn’t meet, and you were doing a disservice to that person. This also applies in any corporate or business or educational institution. Measure performance, but make that very, very human judgment as to what that person’s potential is for higher affairs. If you don’t see it there, don’t think it’ll suddenly emerge. It won’t, and you’ll find you’ve made a mistake.
ASHLEY: General, role models are important in all of our lives, and I’d be interested to know who your role models have been, when you were younger and even today.
POWELL: I’ve had role models throughout my career, and it starts with my parents. I don’t want to be too corny with this, but it was my two immigrant parents who came here with nothing and built a life, a low-income life; we lived in the tenements. They had two children, and they had expectations for us. My sister was a teacher, and I was a soldier. This extended family of relatives that I had – we kept all of the cousins in play. There was no question about dropping out of school or anything like that. If you ever came to them and said, “I want to drop out of school,” they’d drop you out and get another kid, and so help me God they would. [Laughter.] “Don’t shame the family, and mind” – remember that word? – “mind your manners; mind your adults; mind your teachers.” That was drilled into us.
If I hadn’t had that kind of a start in life, it wouldn’t have made any difference who my role models were in the future. That’s what we’re missing so much in this country today, and this is why my wife and I spend so much time in youth programs. If you don’t give kids the right start in life, then they’re behind the curve. That’s why we have the highest incarceration rate in the world.
The role models were my parents, my relatives, my uncles and aunts who kept me in play, and then when I entered the Army, the people who really taught me how to be an officer were not generals. They were the people just above me, captains when I was a lieutenant, who taught me what it was like to be a soldier and what was expected of me. They were good at it. Good, old-time soldiers, and that’s where I picked it up. Those were my role models. Yes, I studied the works and actions of senior generals, and yes, I worked for great generals and I worked for presidents and all that, but that was just building on what I learned in my early years as a kid and my early years in the Army.
What I say to students now is, “Look around. See people who are doing good things. You might want to see a general or a basketball player as a role model, but maybe, when you walk to school, if you see a woman at 6:30 in the morning waiting for a bus to go to work at a low-wage job in order to make enough money to come home and take care of her children, you’re not going to get a better role model than that.” My final message to kids is, “Stop looking for somebody to model after. Be your own role model. Set your own standards. Behave. Study hard. This isn’t brain surgery, kid. Behave, study hard, believe in yourself, believe in America, and don’t make excuses for yourself.” When I went into the army in 1958, I was among the first in a generation of young officers in an un-segregated army. The army finally was desegregated in 1954. Four years later, here I came out of Harlem in the South Bronx. I still remember the message that the army gave me: “Powell, we don’t want to hear any hard immigrant stories about you and your immigrant parents. Don’t tell us about you being poor and all the rest of that stuff, and don’t tell us anything about you being black. We don’t care. The only thing we care about is performance. You perform, you’ll go well. You don’t perform, you ain’t going nowhere. Got it?” “Yeah; I got it!” “OK.” [Laughter.]
The other thing I learned, which was important to me, that I got from my family and from the early leaders in my life, was that you’re going to be subjected to racial discrimination. Even though you’re in an Army that has slowly desegregated, you’re living in a country that has not. You go off base, and you have to go in the back door of stores and theatres and things like that. What they said to me was, “Just keep pressing on, and let racism be a problem for the racists, not you. They’re the ones who are wrong, and don’t ever forget that, and don’t let them ever get you down.”
ASHLEY: Do we have the right level of leadership in the United States, and are there enough leaders demonstrating, as you detail in your book, to truly be an involved, effective leader? It seems that we have a culture that is screaming at one another a lot without, necessarily, a lot getting done sometimes, or a lot of guidance, particularly for young people. Are you concerned about the state of leadership in America?
POWELL: We have great leaders in this country. They’re all over the country. I see them in so many different capacities. I see governors who are doing great things. Silicon Valley has been a breeding ground for great leaders in the information revolution.
What I would say to get to the heart of your question is, in our political system, particularly in Washington, there are great people who are great leaders, but the system increasingly makes it very, very difficult to exercise that leadership. The two parties in Washington have essentially gone to their corners, and they now have to reflect the orthodoxy of the extreme. If you stray the slightest from the orthodoxy of the extremes, you get hammered. You get hammered on cable talk shows, and if you feel a certain way you only listen to the cable talk shows that re-enforce the way you feel. You don’t look on the other side to see if you ought to be learning something differently, and that makes it very hard for our leaders, who are attacked for having any lack of orthodoxy, to essentially exercise the kind of leadership we’d like to see.
This is far different than the Congress I knew when I was just starting out 30 years ago in high politics in Washington, where they would get together and talk and find a compromise. That’s become much more difficult now, because of the orthodoxy of their positions. We’ll get through this, but I’m deeply troubled that we don’t have enough people stepping forward who could be leaders, and trying to break through this encrustation of orthodoxy that we have in our political system at this time.
