Decency, Part II: Colin Powell

When Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama yesterday, it was a very, very big deal. Powell is, after all, one of America’s most universally respected Republicans, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs who oversaw victory in the first Gulf War, the National Security Adviser to Bush 41, and of course the former Secretary of State (for better and for worse).

As to how many votes it will sway (or how many votes any endorsement sways)….well….it is hard to believe that large swaths of those still sitting on the fence would not be reassured by Powell’s calm, thoughtful, eloquent explanation as to why he will be voting for Obama.

Of the endorsements that Obama has received, not even Ted Kennedy’s endorsement during the primaries—despite the mantle-passing meaning it had for many Democrats—came close to the significance of Powell’s nod.

(By the way, to all those who have opined ridiculously that Powell picked Obama because of race, please slap yourselves awake immediately, because you’re dreaming. Either that, or you simply failed to listen to a word the man said.)

Powell talked with plainspoken gravitas about the strengths of both Obama and McCain, and then he laid out in clear and graceful terms all the reasons why Obama was the right choice for this moment in American history—and McCain, as much as Powell likes him, was not.

Curiously the most emotionally affecting moment of Powell’s carefully prepared announcement, was not the endorsement itself, but his story about a photograph of a mother he saw in a magazine…..and the message he found in the image:

I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, “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? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, “He’s a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists.” This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery, and she had her head on the headstone of her son’s grave. And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards–Purple Heart, Bronze Star–showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death. He was 20 years old. And then, at the very top of the headstone, it didn’t have a Christian cross, it didn’t have the Star of David, it had crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, and he was an American. He was born in New Jersey. He was 14 years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he can go serve his country, and he gave his life. Now, we have got to stop polarizing ourself in this way. And John McCain is as nondiscriminatory as anyone I know. But I’m troubled about the fact that, within the party, we have these kinds of expressions.

The magazine in which Powell saw the photo (posted above) was the New Yorker. This summer, the photographer Platon took a bunch of pictures of American’s affected by the war in Iraq, among them the dagger-to-the-heart photo of Kareem’s mother leaning, shattered and dreamy with love and grief, against her son’s headstone.

It was important that Colin Powell endorsed Obama. But it was equally important that he made a point of calling out to our better angels, reminding us of our more decent selves.

During this any-means-to-a-win campaign season, it is the quality of simple decency, which Powell both displayed and demanded, that has been in painfully—and sometime dangerously—short supply.

When Colin Powell ended his story about that mother’s dead boy, Kareem—an achingly sweet-faced kid, as you can see below—I startled myself (and the dog) by bursting into tears. I cried in part from sympathetic mother-heartbreak, but mostly out of pure relief that someone finally bothered to say on national television what should have been an everyday truth obvious to all.

I know from conversations and emails I’ve exchanged since….that I was far from the only one to have such a reaction.