General Colin Powell spoke at Colorado State University on Friday evening, April 30, 2010.  It was an opportunity to hear and evaluate this American hero and for 80% of his time on the stage, he did not disappoint.  He spoke with eloquence and he impressed most in the audience with his charm and his ability to speak contemporaneously, without notes.     

General Powell spoke of leadership.  He emphasized that every person in an organization has his/her mission and all roles are important.   This is true whether the individual is a janitor, parks cars or is a diplomat.   He had interesting anecdotal stories from within his career and he demonstrated an ability to charm the large audience. 

He spoke with praise for Ronald Reagan and his audience was warm to that praise.  He described his mission to Moscow that was ordered by President Reagan and his meeting with Gorbachev during that visit.  He spoke in detail of the meeting that Gorbachev concluded by laughingly telling him that America would have to find a new enemy.    

According to General Powell, he never sought the success that he earned, he merely did his very best job no matter what the assignment.   This was a lesson for the young men and women graduating from the Business School who sponsored this event as a dedication to a new addition to the Rockwell Hall School of Business.  He laughingly spoke of the creature comforts and how they could spoil anyone when their position is that of a Cabinet Secretary. 

He mentioned energy options in his speech and he intelligently identified the need to take advantage of all energy options.   He described the political landscape as partisan but he stated emphatically that partisan is not a bad word that it was partisan debate that our founders wanted to encourage when they created a bicameral system.  

There were many humorous anecdotal stories about his retirement and his purchase of a Corvette to replace the Boeing 757 that he once had all to himself.   He spoke of going through airport security for the first time after giving up his 757 and the treatment he had to endure in a process he helped design.   He spoke of the speeding tickets he received in Northern Virginia that were rendered by ex-military men who never failed to salute him after they approached his car and before they wrote the ticket.  With few exceptions his presentation was nothing anyone could quarrel with until students from the School of Business were permitted to ask him a few questions.  This was a disappointing portion of his presentation, not because he didn't continue his charm offensive and not because he didn't speak eloquently, but because he resorted to cheap shots and smear tactics that were unbecoming of a General of the Army and because he elevated a junk science issue once again to a level of significance it does not deserve.

He was asked by a student whether he remained satisfied with his endorsement of Barrack Obama and whether he thought Obama was performing adequately as President?   His response was that he remained satisfied that his endorsement was correct.  Fine, he is entitled to his opinion.  But, then he continued to tell the audience that he had spoken with both candidates throughout the summer and he had discussed directly with them what he felt were the pro and con aspects of their positions.  He hailed McCain as a great friend but in the end he said he had to support Obama because he had a team of professional economic advisors around him and all McCain had was Joe the Plumber.  This was an inaccurate, offensive cheap shot.   General Powell knows that Joe the Plumber was not an economic advisor to John McCain and he also knows from the exposure that Obama's economic advisors include tax cheats and Socialists.  Far be it for a conservative to defend John McCain, despite his war record, but this was beneath the dignity that we all believed General Powell has and was totally uncalled for.   General Powell went on to say that he believed Obama to have been effective in his first 16 months in Afghanistan and Iraq by following the policies of the Bush Administration.  He did not reference the Healthcare legislation that Obama signed into law or the overwhelming lack of debate within the Congress that surrounded that issue.  This was despite his earlier comments that partisan debate was healthy and the intent of our founders.  He did not speak of the tyrannical means by which Obama fired the CEO of a major auto company and took control over two of the major three automobile companies of this country.   He did not speak of the methods of the Obama administration to divide races or to identify scapegoats and thus create the environment of agitation that his policies require in order to develop support.  He provided very little in the way of a critique of the economy or the role that Obama is playing in its decimation.      

He was asked about the legacy he would leave behind for his grandchildren.   He described a world that they would inherit as one free from the threat of nuclear annihilation because the Soviet Empire is no longer our enemy.   He also described North Korea and Iran as capable of diplomatic resolutions.   General Powell is certainly closer to these problems than most but one should worry as to whether he understates the Russians and overstates the optimistic belief that Iran and N. Korea can be resolved with diplomacy.  

He then went on to describe as fact that his grandchildren will have to deal with Global Warming.   He admitted that he did not know whether Global Warming is real or not but it cannot be good for factories to spew particulate matter up their chimneys.   General Powell is certainly smart enough to understand that Global Warming and pollution are two different issues.   Industry has spent millions and as a result has achieved remarkable results from its efforts to clean industry smokestacks, water effluent and land waste over the past forty years.   Global Warming has always been about control, not climate change and all evidence to the contrary of the Global Warming theory was disclosed recently as having been covered up by climatologists at East Anglian University in England.   It should disappoint everyone that General Powell would raise such a farce as a legitimate issue long after the evidence was disclosed regarding the hidden data, the mischaracterized data and the political cover-up associated with e-mails and other honoraries associated with this scientific theory.  

He did not adequately identify the huge national debt his grandchildren would have to service or express any concern for the debt they already owe merely as a result of being future taxpayers.      

His view was definitely a world view that we should fear.  His view threatens the sovereignty of this and all other nations.   As referenced above he believes compromise is the solution to those partisan debates in the Congress but unfortunately, it is difficult to compromise.   It is more than a simple unwillingness to meet one's adversary half way but instead the unwillingness to compromise begs the question, how does a person who is intent on saving the life of babies in the womb compromise with someone who wishes to kill them as a matter of convenience?  How does one compromise his/her belief that Capitalism is what made this country prosperous and led to our nation being the leader of the free world with an adversary intent on a Socialist or Marxist economy?  General Powell may be right that we all have social responsibilities to our fellow man but he is not right in that government is the one to administer those responsibilities by taking from one and giving the harvest of that individual's labor to another. 

That last twenty percent was discouraging and telling.   General Colin Powell proclaimed himself to be a Republican for thirty years.  He served President Ronald Reagan as National Security Advisor.  He served President George H.W. Bush as his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.   He served President George W Bush as his Secretary of State.   He identified himself as a Republican intent on nominating someone other than a conservative as President and seemingly he got the exact candidate he had always described when John McCain was nominated.   Yet, he suddenly abandoned his Republican roots that are known to include limited government, self reliance and a strong national defense for a candidate who was 180 degrees opposite of these tenets and instead professed big government, raiding the treasury on behalf of lower income individuals and who promised a weakened defense on the campaign trail.   Under these circumstances General Powell's choice of Barrack Obama can probably be measured in only one way, his decision was entirely predicated upon the race of the candidate and had nothing to do with the ideals he had promoted for so many years within the GOP.