Thomas Sowell, economist, social commentator and senior fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, shone a light into a dark space today and lit up Colin Powell’s face. [ Obama, Powell and Popularity ]
Specifically, Sowell was talking about Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama, but the interesting path included information that most people were either not aware of or at least they hadn’t put together.
Sowell says “Colin Powell once had such support from the American people that there was nothing to stop him from going all the way to White House – and beyond to greatness – except his own shortcomings.”
First, he covered Powell’s flip-flop on racial quotas and preferences, opposing them in his memoirs, then demanding them at the Republican convention.
The most interesting light shone on the Plame affair, where Powell remained silent, knowing that his subordinate, Richard Armitage outed Plame. In that fiasco, the lives of Judith Miller and Scooter Libby were turned upside down when a special prosecutor gained convictions in a case involving a non-crime: telling columnist Robert Novak that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA.
Sowell says part of Powell’s support for Obama is based on restoring America’s standing with foreign countries. That would be the same America that is “the number one destination of immigrants from around the world, some of whom take desperate chances with their lives to get here, whether across the waters of the Caribbean or by crossing our dangerous southwest desert.”
This gist of Sowell’s argument is that Powell has severely damaged his credibility in the past few years.
Thomas Sowell is a member of the National Black Republican Association
