Colin Powell was always one of those Republicans I had some respect for (like McCain used to be, but I digress). Powell seemed to have at least some awareness of the world around him and especially of the importance of diplomacy. Like everyone else, I was disappointed when he went before the UN and, well, lied. When he stepped down in the wake of Bush’s re-sort-of-election, I was really angry, because I felt that residual respect and affection for Powell in this country could’ve swung the election for Kerry if he’d resigned before the election. He wouldn’t even have had to make an explicit endorsement–his leaving the ship would’ve been a sign.
Powell was head of the State Department–the department that relies most on performative language, according to Cook. The Secretary of State and his underlings do their job mainly by making statements. Approval, disapproval, etc. are expressed through the media as well as through direct diplomacy.
Powell, then, knew exactly what he was doing when he took to Meet the Press to make his endorsement of Barack Obama.
He didn’t appear on stage with Obama and probably won’t (though you know the ad people are working overtime to cut his words into a spot). He sat in a chair, comfortably, and spoke honestly. He didn’t invoke race once. He prefaced his statement with both respect for and criticism of John McCain, and especially of the choice of Sarah Palin, and then spoke of Obama as a potentially transformational figure.
And most importantly, he called out the Republican party on scare tactics and fearmongering, on xenophobia and hatred. Powell of all people has tremendous power to make the comments that there’s nothing wrong with being Muslim. As a general, as one of the architects of several of our recent wars in the Middle East, he will be accused by no sane person of being a terrorist sympathizer. When he spoke of an American Muslim soldier who died in Iraq, he sounded sincere, unlike McCain’s phony invocations of a bracelet from a soldier’s mother.
Implicit in those statements was an endorsement of Obama as the better leader on Iraq. He didn’t have to say it outright. He invoked Iraq and a fallen soldier in a way that if I didn’t know better I’d call a left-wing dogwhistle. I felt for just a second as if Powell had whispered in my ear, “I’m sorry about that, guys. I’m trying to fix it.”
Powell’s appearance on a news talk show was itself the top headline on the New York Times and the third headline on the Washington Post today. While I’m not going to go into what that says about canned news events and the corporate media here, suffice it to say that once again, we can see that speech is itself a form of action, especially in the executive branch.
As I watched him speak I found myself really moved and drawn in. I felt that he gave legitimate reasons for his actions and yet there was this sense of fatherly emotion behind it all. I felt that he was saying that he had made a mistake once and would not make the same mistake again by following the party script. Powell followed his conscience and I for one am more than willing to follow his lead this time.
RE: Colin Powell ‘lying’ at the United Nations, and performative speech at governmental forums like the U.N.
It was my understanding that, when Colin Powell as Secretary of State made his presentation to the U.N., Powell himself was not knowingly lying, but rather presenting the findings that had been deceitfully conveyed to him as factually true by Cheney and by the rest of the Bush administration. I think Powell later announced to a journalist that when he, Powell, found out that he had been deliberately deceived by the rest of the Bush administration in order to serve as a credible ‘patsy’ to the U.N. audience, Powell was enraged. I think one of Powell’s deputies, an individual named Lawrence Wilkerson (I think), also further explained Powell’s dissatisfaction with the Bush administration. I am reciting this off the top of my head, but I think it can be confirmed through Google; I believe Wilkerson was interviewed by the New York Times. At any rate, Powell is not entirely to blame for his performance at the U.N. because, at the time, he didn’t know that he had been deliberately fed false data by Cheney and Bush.
Also, in my previous comments to Sarah J.’s original post on performative public communications, I should have noted
that the U.N. and other public assemblies of government representatives, are indeed governmental forums where effective public speaking is crucial. So, not only domestic and foreign public opinion in democratic countries can be impacted by effective public speaking, but also governmental opinion in bodies like the U.N. I should have admitted that in my prior comments and I note it now.