OPINION: Why Powell should have run

Oct. 31—Since his death on Oct. 18, which he, anticipating it, insisted was no cause for grief, I have been thinking about Colin Powell. Do not feel sorry for me, he said, I have lived long and well and enjoyed the great show.

To live many years is to know that life is three things — comic, tragic, and ironic.

And so is history.

It is not comic, but it is tragic and ironic that so great a leader as Mr. Powell, and one so self-consciously obsessed with the nature and disciplines of leadership, should be remembered for a disastrous act of leadership. This was, of course, his part in the second Iraq war — the one we only recently admitted we lost. We actually lost it years ago, yet American soldiers and Iraqi innocents kept dying.

Mr. Powell, who embodied the American dream of success based on merit — and achievement coming from nothing — was, we are told, against that war in the inner councils.

But it was he who, having lost the policy debate in the Bush II White House, went out and sold the war to the nation and the world.

Many of us were brought around by Mr. Powell's word. He would not lie, we thought. And I don't think he did, intentionally.

He would be sure before he made the case for weapons of mass destruction to the rest of us, we thought.

Maybe he was sure. Maybe he had doubts. But he was wrong. And he was wrong to be the good soldier and pitch a war he must have known in his bones was ultimate folly.

For he surely doubted the war met his own by then well-known standards for justification.

At this point in human and foreign affairs, those tests make more sense than even those of Thomas Aquinas:

—Set clear goals for the war.

—Have an exit strategy.

—Secure the support of our countrymen and women and of the "opinions of mankind."

—Consider at least some potential unintended consequences.

—Fix what you break.

And this is to name only a few.

Mr. Powell also understood that only the Iraqis and Afghans could secure their own freedom and build a society of laws and rights.

And it must have been clear to him at some point that this would never happen.

His was a tragic choice.

And I hope that it will eventually be outweighed in a higher court than history, which is likely to be unforgiving. Because the rest of Colin Powell's career, 50 years' worth, was one of selfless service, competence, and personal decency.

He was a man who lived by and for aphorisms of service, competence and decency.

He developed 13 leadership commandments, but there are four that I like very much:

—Share credit.

—Have a vision and set standards.

—Optimism is a force multiplier.

—Remain calm and be kind.

Especially in times of crisis and in situations of stress, he said, soldiers, workers and citizens appreciate someone who shares a kind word, stays cool, and keeps on.

His leadership rules, regardless of his own failure, apply to almost every setting and situation — a family, an army, a fast-food restaurant. They just make sense.

I wish Colin Powell had been president as well as a four-star general, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, national security adviser, and secretary of state.

I wish he had run and won when he had the chance.

He was, after all, the most popular public figure in the country at one point.

And I wish this not because he would have been the first African-American president before Barack Obama.

And not because he was a scholar and teacher of leadership, which meant that he could also be a student.

And not because of his decency, which was deep and innate as well as learned.

I wish he had become president because he was a fixer; an incrementalist; a professional.

He was not a utopian or an anti-utopian, a wrecker.

He was a man who restored old cars. He knew, by his own temper and his times, that all progress is relative and that all solutions are proximate.

He wanted to make the country better but not "new" or different.

Neither did he want to take it back to a thing or place that never existed.

He wanted forward progress, but with open eyes and patience.

He was infinitely better prepared for the presidency than Barack Obama or George W. Bush. But, even more importantly, he would not have attempted to use the presidency to do something he thought only he could do — to save us in some way as Mr. Obama and Donald Trump both promised.

He was a servant not a savior.

I wish Colin Powell had run for and been elected president because he failed.

He knew it and we knew it.

It humbled and ennobled him.

Beware the president, or would-be president, who does not make mistakes.

Beware saviors.

Keith C. Burris is the former editor, vice president and editorial director of Block Newspapers (burriscolumn@gmail.com)