My American Journey

National Review, Nov 6, 1995 by A.J. Bacevich

Mr. Bacevich is executive director of the Foreign Policy Institute of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C.

AS THIS review appears, the return of Colin Powell to public life has taken on the trappings of a triumphal procession. In treatment accorded more typically to rock stars than to literary neophytes, the retired general has inspired something approaching a personality cult -- complete with coast-to-coast tour, fawning media coverage, and groupies who at every stop crowd sidewalks in the hope of obtaining an autograph or perhaps merely in order to bask in his reflected glory. My American Journey, the ostensible basis for the hoopla, has rocketed to the top of the best-seller lists. In a society in which sitting through any movie more than two hours long is seen as a mark of serious commitment, one may wonder whether the legions lining up to buy the general's memoir will actually read its six-hundred-plus pages. Rather, one senses that it is being acquired as a talisman, testifying to the purchaser's deep regard for a Great American. Yet if My American Journey is merely collected rather than read, that will be a misfortune. This is in its way an important book --though its true significance seems likely to be overlooked.

To the extent that the text itself has received scrutiny, attention has focused on its closing pages, in which Powell lifts the veil ever so slightly on his political beliefs and ambitions. Whether intended as the foundation for a run for the Presidency, or merely as a marketing device, this section has been subjected to detailed exegesis by those eager to divine whether the former general is a genuine conservative or a closet liberal, an authentic Republican or a Democrat in disguise.

The emphasis is misplaced. Powell's opaque and cliche-ridden political testament is easily the weakest part of his book, the one section that comes across as ersatz, as if drafted by some committee of excessively coy political operatives rather than by Powell himself and his collaborator. The contrast with the easy, anecdotal tone and brisk pace of the rest of the narrative could hardly be more striking.

What does that narrative have to offer? Although unlikely to displace Ulysses S. Grant's military memoirs among the classics of the genre, My American Journey is a charming story well told. No doubt many will find it inspirational. Yet few readers are likely to mistake it for great literature. Those searching for penetrating insight or introspection will likewise find it disappointing. Indeed, the book provides little evidence to suggest that Powell is blessed with a powerful intellect or a capacity for innovative thought.

Rather, he is a man of his times: better at fashioning sound-bites than at acting the part of visionary. Professing to have been "astonished by the death grip of old ideas on some military minds," Powell appears oblivious to the stolidly conventional nature of his own thinking. His chief claim to boldness as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff rests on his sponsorship of a scheme for modestly shrinking the Cold War military while preserving it from anything resembling fundamental restructuring -- the so-called Base Force concept which was dead-on-arrival in Congress. Thus, although Powell's status as the most renowned officer of his generation will no doubt remain intact, his legacy turns out to be thin on substance.

Rising to the top of the American military hierarchy in a period brimming with momentous developments, Powell was no more Great Captain than he was Great Reformer. Instead, to judge from these pages, he was the consummate political general: skillful inside operator, master of the bureaucracy, cool and telegenic briefer, careful cultivator of the influential within government and the media. It is an image with which Powell himself is not especially comfortable. Time and again, he insists that his true calling was to the brotherhood of warriors. Although he labors to bolster that claim -- ticking off with almost unseemly thoroughness every soldierly accomplishment, from his days in ROTC summer camp ("Best Cadet, Company D") through a career in which he graduated at or near the top of his class in each military school or training course he attended and in which he routinely received accelerated promotions -- his case is not persuasive. In fact, from the time that, as a young major, he donned civvies to enter graduate school in 1969 until he retired in 1993, his assignments with the Army in the field were brief and sporadic. He was a touch-and-go soldier, swooping in to fill some plum career-enhancing billet, only to be summoned in short order to return to Washington to deal with weightier matters of state.

That pattern of assignments reflected not happenstance but shrewdness. The ethos of the profession in which Colin Powell flourished is as much one of cut-throat competition as it is of selfless service. Success requires that an officer master the rules of the game at an early age and then play that game with single- minded intensity. Powell was a quick study. Even as a very junior officer, he proved himself to be a skillful player, resolute in his refusal to be distracted by any extraneous cause or controversy. Thus, in recalling his encounters with flagrant racism while serving in the Deep South, Powell justifies his decision to swallow his resentment. "I wanted, above all, to succeed in my Army career. I did not intend to give way to self-destructive rage, no matter how provoked. If people in the South insisted on living by crazy rules, then I would play the hand dealt me for now." The rules were crazy but he would abide by them. He would not rock the boat. "I was not looking for trouble. I was not marching, demonstrating, or taking part in sit-ins. My eye was on an Army career for myself and a good life for my family. For me, the real world began on the post."