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Sunday, Jul 12, 2009
As Colin and Michael Powell exit the Bush administration, they leave legacies of failure.
Jan 24, 2005 | Four years ago, when they were tapped by George W. Bush for high-profile government positions, Colin and Michael Powell radiated confidence, and also gave Republicans a brash new look. Trusted and widely admired, the African-American father-and-son team boasted gold-plated résumés. As the most famous soldier of his generation -- retired Army general, national security advisor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- Colin Powell oversaw the State Department while Michael Powell, the well-connected rising star who had sparked open talk among Republicans about a future Virginia governorship, was elevated to chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.
Now, in the wake of Michael's Jan. 21 announcement that he, like his father, was stepping down from public life, both men end disappointing tenures with their reputations dented from their time serving the Bush White House. Rather than overseeing administration triumphs, the Powells became associated with obvious policy and public relations failures that left some people wondering what, if anything, the men stood for.
As the point person for the administration's push for further -- and drastic -- media consolidation, allowing companies such as Viacom/CBS, Disney/ABC, NBC, AOL Time Warner and News Corp./Fox scoop up more and more properties, Michael Powell took a tricky but not impossible political issue and turned it into a rare bipartisan setback for the administration. It was an issue both the National Rifle Association and MoveOn.org, William Safire and Bill Clinton found common ground in opposing: the FCC's proposed rule changes for media ownership. Three million Americans contacted the FCC to voice their opposition, an unprecedented outpouring of public concern for commission procedure. (Conservatives fret about indecent programming, and how consolidation could further erode standards, while liberals fear deregulation could drive political diversity from the airwaves.) And that's when Powell wasn't overseeing a mini-cultural war -- conveniently unveiled during a presidential election year -- over indecency on the public airwaves.
As the White House's senior diplomat, Colin Powell's primary job was to assemble a viable coalition of allies to fight a preemptive war against Iraq. After six months of pressing flesh at the United Nations and using the full force of U.S. negotiating might, Powell was handed the humiliating defeat of not only failing to land the support of longtime U.S. allies such as France and Germany but also being unable to persuade even loyal American supporters like Mexico and Canada to sign off on the invasion.
Strikingly similar issues, such as glaring contradictions that often undercut their initiatives, dogged both men's rocky tenures. For instance, when Michael first joined the FCC as a commissioner in 1997, he agreed that the runaway media consolidation unleashed by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was "scary," adding, "The reason the pace is scary is because it's hard to keep up with and to know when to put the brakes on." Upon being tapped as FCC chairman in 2001, though, Powell became a strident proponent for further unleashing media conglomerates.
Before Janet Jackson's boob flopped out during last year's Super Bowl halftime show, prompting Powell and the FCC to unleash unprecedented indecency fines and call for further investigations -- a move some critics blasted as an assault on the First Amendment -- Powell was on the record dismissing concerns about raunchy programming, famously telling reporters, "I don't think my government is my nanny. I still have never understood why something as simple as turning it off is not part of the answer." Later he told the Washington Post, "It's better to tolerate the abuses on the margins than to invite the government to interfere with the cherished First Amendment." Since the announcement on Jan. 21 about his pending departure from the FCC, Powell has drifted back toward his original set of core beliefs, telling the Washington Times over the weekend that regulating radio and television programming clashed with his firm beliefs in the First Amendment and made him "uncomfortable." But he wasn't too uncomfortable to sign off on $7.7 million worth of indecency fines last year. That represented a $7.69 million increase in fines the FCC levied during Powell's first year on the commission.
Colin Powell's flip-flopping was even more dramatic as he watched the military operation in Iraq run completely counter to the so-called Powell doctrine. Written in hopes of avoiding the disastrous policy mistakes of Vietnam, where Powell served as a young soldier, the Powell doctrine insisted American troops should be sent into battle only if there was a clear strategy, including an exit strategy; that the American public had to have a clear understanding of a war's goals; and that wars should be fought only in the national interest, not for humanitarian goals or "nation building." In the case of Iraq, Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ignored all three key guidelines, yet Powell remained silent.
