RUTHFULLY YOURS

“Sorry man, it’s not happening.”

There was a time when Colin Powell could have had the Republican presidential nomination for the asking. He might not have been able to beat Clinton in ’96, but he would have had a decent shot at it.

That makes watching Colin Powell playing up to Obama in the hopes of landing a cabinet position all the more pathetic. Obama could have picked Powell for Secretary of Defense, and Powell is still hoping that the Hagel nomination will fall through and he does, but that hope is as unreal as Powell becoming President Colin Powell.

Powell would have been a far more credible and effective nominee than Hagel, a man widely disliked by virtually everyone. In every respect, Powell would have been a better nominee than Hagel. But Colin Powell sinned in the eyes of the left during his role as Secretary of State in a Republican administration and he is busy atoning for it through the traditional method of damning the Republican Party.

This display of zeal is all the more pathetic because Obama appears to have very little interest in doing anything for Colin Powell. Powell is only an asset as a moderate figure and this is not an administration that is interested in even presenting the appearance of moderation.

Hagel wasn’t picked because he was a moderate, but because he was an extremist, so Colin Powell is trying to belatedly become an extremist as well.

By constantly playing the race card, the one card he has left, and damning the Republican Party as a party of racists, Colin Powell is not accomplishing anything except writing the shameful conclusion to his own career by playing the useful idiot in the hopes of getting thrown to him a bone by people who have no use for him.

Colin Powell left the Republican Party on bad terms, twice, washing out of the Bush Administration, and then running to Obama out of spite at not being picked by McCain. Four years later he has nothing to show for it. The Republican Party hasn’t gotten into the White House, but neither has Colin Powell.

Powell can’t wait around another four years to see what happens in 2016, so he has nothing to lose. In 2008, he still maintained the pretense of being an objective observer looking for a transcendent figure to unite the country. Now Powell sounds shrill and angry. The accusations have become irrational and petty.

Colin Powell is pimping himself out on everything from gun control to false accusations of racism, showing how eager he is to do any of the dirty work that the Democrats might have for him. And his reward for that is more appearances on Sunday morning shows, the carrot still dangling in front of his face. A carrot that he will eventually realize will never be his.

The Colin Powell we see on the Sunday morning shows is a bitter man, angry over not getting as far as he wanted to go. It isn’t racial bitterness that Powell projects, but personal grievance. Colin Powell didn’t get what he wanted by being a Republican and he hasn’t gotten it from the Democrats either. This is his last chance and the door isn’t opening for him no matter what he does.

Powell is a sad man. A man who didn’t take the right opportunities and is now taking the wrong ones. An angry man willing to do what he never did before. A man who, like so many in Washington D.C., traded his honor for careerism, and now has neither honor nor career left.