Powell Endorses Obama

Even better is this quote:

"Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim." Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he's a Christian. He's always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president?

/me has a twisted sense of humour, and subtly slides the "race card" out into the open as a reason.

Rush Limbaugh's been beating that particular drum all day since the announcement came out.

I was delighted, too! :D

Colin Powell has been deeply ashamed since he found out that he was used to peddle bullshit to get the United States to invade Iraq. He resigned as soon as he realized what he'd done.

I didn't see the actual TV program, but NPR's coverage indicated that he felt that McCain was just not up to the job, and Obama was.

Well, when you look at the direction the Republican party - and in particular, this Republican Presidential ticket - has taken recently, I suppose Colin Powell might accidentally get mistaken for being liberal. All things being relative, and all that.

I mean, did Colin Powell get bitten by a liberal about a month ago, or what?

*giggle*

[Brer] I'm not sure that Powell ever rose quite to the level of partisan in my mind. This is, I think, where his apparent flip-flopping has stemmed from over the years.

He is, I think, an old-school military man at heart and manifests every ounce of the traditional "All for your country" and "The President IS the country" dogma that has helped get (and keep) us in the current mess. He could never do or say anything against The President, but he can certainly freely choose who to support for the next one.

That being said, I think he is also a conservative at heart; but one that I think is again more the old-school sort. A lot of these have been honestly breaking for Obama too. As much as we like to think of him as "One of us" in the liberal sense, Obama really has a lot in common with the conservative mindset (before it went completely insane).

On the whole I think this is all a good thing. Liberalism and Conservatism used to really be two slightly differing perspectives of the same goal, not hyper-aggressive alter egos of each other. Hopefully this is a way we can start to recapture "centrism" as a positive thing, rather than the sham it has become.

Well said. I have the same impression as you, that as a career military officer, all of Gen. Powell's training and life experience led him to support his commanding officer - the president - no matter what his personal feelings. A military man doesn't get far by questioning authority; he may argue for a course of action if asked for his opinion, but if given a direct order, he carries it out. That's why he went to the UN and presented the "evidence" about Iraq's WMD - an event he later described as "painful" and a blot on his record.

I suppose, in the grand scheme of things, it would have been nice if he'd stood up more for his beliefs...but I'm not him, and I wasn't in his shoes at the time. I was glad to see that he too is endorsing Obama, and I'm with you - I hope that this presages more centrism and constructive dialogue in politics.