"I'VE GOT TO MAKE SOME CHOICES"

By John F. Stacks, Michael Kramer

Retired General Colin Powell met with TIME's editor for politics John F. Stacks and chief political correspondent Michael Kramer for his first on-the-record interview about his possible run for the presidency in 1996

TIME: Will you run for President?

Powell: I still haven't come to that decision point in my life. My plan right now is to keep my options open through the book tour. The book tour is a sort of coming-out party for me. The past two years I've done no interviews, no television. People are wondering what Forest Gump Colin Powell stands for. Well, they're about to find out, as I deal with the various issues that are out there and I become a public figure again. And that will help the American people understand who I am, and it will also give me a chance to get a better sense of what is going on in the country.

Then, when the book tour is over, I'll sit down with my family and those people who provide me with advice and counsel and some very dear friends who care about me and make a decision as to what to do with the next phase of my life. Although many people wish to put it in a binary form--you're either going to run for a high political office or you're not--I have many more choices available to me that will allow me to serve the country.

TIME: But as a practical matter, do you think it will be necessary to decide after the tour?

Powell: If I decided to run for office as a Republican, then I've got to get started in November because the registrations start to close down in December. As an independent, you don't have to make a choice quite that early. But wrapping the two together, I can't just keep this up forever; I've got to get on with it. So I would think that after the book tour, I've got to make some choices.

TIME: Where do you think the Republican Party is philosophically?

Powell: Philosophically, the party is wider than you might expect just from listening to the ordinary rhetoric. There are a lot of Republicans who are somewhat silent and tend to be more in the moderate, Rockefeller vein. In order to appeal to the active wing of the party, most candidates are tacking to the right, and that seems to be what Bob Dole is doing.

TIME: You once wondered whether what you called the activists in the Republican Party would attack you like a virus if you ran because you may be too moderate. Is that still a concern?

Powell: That is the question I'll have to examine as I go through this calculus. I'm certainly more moderate in my views than most of the more active Republicans who are out there right now fighting for the heart and soul of the party.

TIME: For example, would you have turned back the money from the gay Republican group the way Dole did?

Powell: If I do enter electoral politics in whatever form, I would try to make it as open a candidacy and as large a tent as the Republicans are fond of saying they have.

TIME: How do you see the chance for an independent candidacy now?

Powell: I think there is probably greater support for an independent movement than there was a year ago. That's reflected in all the polling. It is not clear yet whether an independent run, unless it is self-financed, can actually succeed in winning a general election and winning the electoral college. Right now, it seems as if an independent candidate would be running just as that, with no party behind him and with very severe constraints on what you can do money-wise: no matching funds coming from the Federal Government, and yet you have the same restrictions as the party candidates on how you can raise money and how much money you can raise--a thousand dollars a person. So I think it is a very, very difficult thing to do, but there seems to be more support in the countryside for an independent candidacy, which reflects more dissatisfaction in the countryside with what they see the two parties doing.

TIME: And a distrust of politicians?

Powell: There is always a certain amount of distrust of politics and politicians and of Washington. In this age you see this often untidy process of democracy where there is an explosion in media coverage and where politics has become a national spectator sport. The American people have been relieved of the burden of the cold war, where you kind of had to trust your government to keep the evil empire at bay and you wanted to cut your government a little slack. Attention is now turned inward. They are not entirely happy with what they see. Too often they see partisan bickering and fighting that goes beyond the reasonable levels of democratic discourse. Is there really that much difference between what the Clinton Administration wants to do with Medicare and what the Republicans on the Hill want to do with Medicare? Do they both want to cut it? Yes. So what's the fight? Why don't they just figure out what it is, explain it to the American people and lead us there? No, the Democratic Administration is going to claim that the Republicans are doing it to pay off rich people, and the Republicans are claiming that the Democrats just don't want them to break up the welfare state. That's wonderful politics, but it's a little disconcerting to the American people who watch this whole thing. They're looking for something a little better than that, a little comity in the political process. They're looking for more understanding that we want our problems solved. There have also been some very unpleasant things happening in Washington, some of the scandals that have come along, some of the personal problems of congressional members. And there is campaign-financing reform. The American people do not understand why that is not a simple matter to solve. Congress has been saying they're going to solve it, and it doesn't get solved. And it seems to me to be undercutting faith in government when the leaders of the Congress are out spending most of their time raising money. The American people are expecting more than they're getting right now. That causes anxiety and distrust, and so they're looking around for something else. And that something else manifests itself as other candidates or as an independent candidacy. I'm not sure anyone or anything can live up to the standards the American people are trying to put on their political process, because politics is ultimately debate, fighting, compromise, consensus, and then you get the synthesis you need to move forward. But it isn't always pretty to watch.

TIME: But in the epilogue of your book, the policy prescriptions you offer are at best embryonic.

Powell: It was not intended to be a political memoir sculpted like a diplomatic communique. I know that I will have to, if I enter public life, come down on those issues. But I haven't declared myself a candidate. I will have to learn, but it doesn't mean I have to rush through it right now and leap down an elevator shaft. What you're asking me to do is put myself up on Capitol Hill and say exactly whether I'm for the Clinton version of welfare reform or the Bob Dole version of welfare reform. I don't know enough yet.

TIME: But on welfare reform, you must have a personal view on whether you would cut off benefits to unwed mothers.

Powell: Welfare has not served its intent and purpose over the years. As I listen to the debate, for example, over unwed mothers, I go past that to the child. I realize there is a need to make sure that the government is not in some way encouraging people to have children just to get another $80 or $90 a month. The root cause of these young, unwed girls' having children is to bring something of value into their lives, lives they often see as having no other value. The problem is more severe than that. If we cut that child off, are we creating a bigger problem? Frankly, I haven't thought it through. And it doesn't seem like all the experts on the Hill who have put it into effect for 30 years have thought it through either.

TIME: You've talked about how unseemly the process of running is. Do you think you could endure it?

Powell: This is not foreign to me. I've been in the public eye for eight years. So this doesn't trouble me. I'm used to being misunderstood, taken out of context, attacked, so it's something I can endure. But there are two things that are at work here. One, that notwithstanding that I'm already a public figure, I'm still a very private person, and my family is a private existence. We live quiet and private lives. So this would be a change in the life of my family unlike anything we have ever experienced before. And I have to give very, very serious thought about whether we should do that to the family. And the second point I always have to make is that when I look at the other candidates who are out there, they have had a lifelong ambition to rise in politics; they have been doing it all their lives. And to them the Holy Grail is the presidency. That has not been my driving ambition. Even though I've been called a political soldier, I am fundamentally a soldier. I have repeatedly turned down offers for appointive office and elective office because my driving ambition was just to be a good soldier. My passion was for soldiering, not for politics. So the question I'm going to have to answer in my own mind is whether I can generate a similar passion. You can't go into this enterprise without a sense of commitment and a sense of passion. That's what we will be looking at over the next month or two.

TIME: A Powell doctrine for politics? All or nothing at all?

Powell: You don't do it to fool around, you do it to win. And I think that's a pretty good rule for life as well as for military operations.

TIME: But at this point, do you want this job?

Powell: I haven't answered that question. I actually retired two years ago with no thought of re-entering public life any time soon. This isn't part of some grand campaign to put myself in position because I really, really want this job.

TIME: Do you feel confident you could handle the presidency?

Powell: Yes. I think I have the skills to handle the job.