That the political season will not be brightened by the presence of Colin Powell as a presidential candidate came as crushing news to political operatives who had battened on to him with rapacious benevolence, eager to help him advance their agendas, he having not made his own known. Implicitly acknowledging that for most of the country he is a frame without a picture, he combined class and candor in his grateful statement that the enthusiasm for him says more about the country than about him.
He has proved that he is among those fortunate few who are large enough to take up space even when they are absent. So he may stay near the center of national life.Numerous factors probably dissuaded him from undergoing the ordeal of a presidential campaign. One factor may have been some polls showing that when Powell was placed in the as-yet-unwinnowed Republican field, he leapt to the top, but in a hypothetical two-man race, Dole against Powell, Dole won decisively because virtually all conservatives went to Dole. As a candidate, Powell probably would have polarized the nomination race ideologically and lost it.
In his role of glistening possibility, Powell performed a public service by simultaneously making some of his supporters and detractors look dizzy. Those conservatives who were in a semi-swoon about the therapeutic potential of a Powell candidacy for a nation in need of the ointment of Powell's rhetoric resembled teenage girls at a Bon Jovi concert. And those conservatives who recently held a press conference to find fault with Powell's character revealed their own, and would have forfeited their reputations for wisdom if they had such.
Many Americans will regret that there will be no enlargement of the Republican field, concerning which there is, to say no more, an enthusiasm deficit. But, then, Americans are usually grumpy about the quality of their presidential choices, and an astute foreign observer, Lord Bryce, permanently ratified that feeling with a famous chapter title in his book "The American Commonwealth." The title was, "Why Great Men Are Not Chosen Presidents." However, Michael Barone, editor of The Almanac of American Politics, notes that Bryce's book, published in 1888, was revised in 1910, on the eve of the election in which three of the most intellectually distinguished presidents ran against each other - Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson.
The choice next November will, we need not wait to conclude, be less distinguished. But there is no certainty that Powell, subjected to 12 months of a discipline new to him, would by then have been thought to have markedly enriched the political menu.
Powell's indecision froze the Republican race, helping Dole, the front-runner. Powell's decision is the gun for the final lap; the race probably will be over in 20 weeks, by late March. By then Powell will have watched the conservative dynamic of the Republican nominating process, and probably will be serene about his decision not to test his political wings in such turbulence.