IN THIS historic presidential election, endorsements matter more than usual. When word leaked that General Colin Powell would be endorsing Barack Obama today, a river of thoughts and feelings ran through me.
My feelings about Colin Powell remain ambivalent, but they lean toward the negative. The Iraq war was a gravest foreign policy mistake of my adult life and his speech on the floor of the United Nations made me weep.
That said, he represents competence in foreign affairs and when Rasmussen polled him against John McCain in August in a hypothetical presidential race, he trounced McCain by 20 points.
Back in February, their polls said that a Powell endorsement would make nearly 30% of voters more likely to vote for the candidate he endorsed.
People like Colin Powell, despite his lies under George W. Bush.
To non-political junkies, and even a few die-hards, Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama would therefore be a net plus.
Now that I've seen the endorsement with my own eyes, heard it with my own ears, I'm certain of that.
But what was most important is that he called the Bill Ayers attacks demagoguery, which is exactly why it's so viscerally painful, he criticized the GOP for narrowing the party and moving too far to the right (Sarah Palin? Get the hell outta here!) and he smacked the country around on its hate for Muslims, citing a young Muslim soldier, Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, killed in Iraq who was 14 on 9/11 and vowed to go fight for his country and ended up sacrificing his life.
I was impressed more by that than by the endorsement. The Islamophobia spreading across this country like wildfire is so vile, and so dangerous, it threatens our national security from within. I've been having crying spells for weeks now and it has everything to do with seeing a people demonized and terrorized simply because of their beliefs. And even though it must, that fire is not going to be extinguished when Barack becomes president.
But back to the good news.
Barack can take half of what Powell said and put it in ads from now till the election. He might even want to use some of what Powell said after his interview. "We're all Americans," would be a good place to start.
