Better late than never: My Thoughts on the Powell Endorsement

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that former Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed Sen. Obama for president this past Sunday on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ (read Scott’s post HERE)… and while I know I’m a bit behind on writing about this, understand that it took me a few days to fully understand just how big this endorsement is… for it’s not solely an endorsement of Obama, but also an admonishing of the gop as a whole.

Naturally, the republican wonk (perhaps wanker is more apropos) machine decided to immediately criticize Powell for standing up to for convictions, NOT following the lemmings over the cliff, and putting country, and not party, first.

Sen. McCain could learn a lot from Mr. Powell.

And while I applaud Mr. Powell for doing just that, one has to question if this endorsement does more good for Obama… or if it’s worse for McCain and, in essence, the entire republican party.

I think it’s the latter.

There’s no question the endorsement was a huge boost for the Obama campaign, but keep in mind that there are some Liberals and Independents (a group each side is counting on to propel them to victory) who are pissed at Powell for dragging us into an unjust war.

When thinking about that though, one also has to wonder just how much Powell was lied to by the other members of the Bush(whacked) Administration, specifically Bush, Cheney, Rice, et al.

It’s because of that that I am not one of those people that are pissed at Powell as I believe he was put into an un-envying position. Hell, I’ve liked Colin Powell since I first became aware of him during the first Gulf War, following his career and thinking that one day HE would be the one running for president… unfortunately his career took a divergent and utterly destructive path in the form of accepting the offer from George W. Bush to become his SOS and since his resignation he’s been on what I call a ‘search for atonement.’

(Don’t ask about his support of Ted Stevens (r-AK) in his corruption trial as that one still boggles my mind… but I’m getting off track…)

Powell furthered that ‘search for atonement’ Sunday, not just because he endorsed Obama but he also systematically dismantled the foundation of the McPalin campaign while still labeling himself a republican.

That’s why I think the endorsement is an indictment of the gop more than anything else. And although McCain would never say it publically, this has to hurt… for no other reason than Powell maintains he’s a republican and yet can’t bring himself to endorse his party’s candidate.

Now is not the time to be discussing a place for Powell in an Obama cabinet… after all, that’s for people much smarter than I to decide. Now is the time to listen to what Powell said Sunday and has continued to say since; McCain is not running a clean campaign… Palin is not experienced enough to be VP… McCain’s judgment is not to be trusted.

Keep that in mind when you head to the polls in the days ahead… and perhaps on November 5th our nation will wake up with a new direction slated to being on January 20th of 2009.